[Solved] - Freeze, then NO audio after reboots.

[kdemeoz]

After a good run since i last posted about it [ https://forums.mauilinux.org/showthread....7#pid42367 ], tonight out of the blue my Tower suffered another spontaneous freeze. As "usual" when this occurs everything was frozen so that again REISUB didn't work, so a hard reset was needed [same as the looooong history in that link].

However, tonight's problem has a new symptom. I have rebooted now many times, including to older kernels, but 100% of the boots since the freeze-reset tonight, there is no audio.

Not only is there no sound, but the systray widget is broken, showing only a small sideways arrow, & a blank popup when clicked. Reinstalling plasma-widget-volumewin7mixer didn't help.

As for the no-sound itself, i have reinstalled pulseaudio with Synaptic, but that has not helped.

When i run:

Code:

GA-Z97-HD3:~$ start-pulseaudio-x11
Connection failure: Connection refused
pa_context_connect() failed: Connection refused

When i run:

Code:

GA-Z97-HD3:~$ kstart pulseaudio &
[1] 7549
GA-Z97-HD3:~$ kstart(7549) main: Omitting both --window and --windowclass arguments is not recommended
E: [pulseaudio] main.c: Daemon startup without any loaded modules, refusing to work.
^C
[1]+  Done                    kstart pulseaudio

At the time of tonight's freeze & reset, i was live-streaming internet music with Clementine, & audio was perfectly normal. Prior to that i had been watching videos in my browser, & again sound was normal.

Unless it is only coincidence, i'm tempted to assume that something fatal occurred to pulseaudio during the streaming that caused the freeze & broke the sound... but i don't understand why none of the repairs i tried have helped.

Ideas pls? How can i get my sound back?

[leszek]

If it really freezed maybe the filesystem is broken.
Can you start a live system and check the filesystem with fsck

[kdemeoz]

If it really freezed maybe the filesystem is broken.
Can you start a live system and check the filesystem with fsck

Thanks. I did the check, but if i interpret the results correctly, all is good here [?]:

Code:

maui@maui:~$ sudo blkid
/dev/sda1: UUID="snip" TYPE="vfat" PARTUUID="snip"
/dev/sda2: LABEL="Maui" UUID="snip" TYPE="ext4" PARTUUID="snip"
/dev/sda3: LABEL="Home" UUID="snip" TYPE="ext4" PARTUUID="snip"
/dev/sdb3: LABEL="Seagate" UUID="snip" TYPE="ext4" PARTUUID="snip"
/dev/loop0: TYPE="squashfs"
/dev/sdb1: UUID="snip" TYPE="swap" PARTUUID="snip"

maui@maui:~$ sudo fsck /dev/sda2
fsck from util-linux 2.27.1
e2fsck 1.43.1 (08-Jun-2016)
Maui: clean, 421369/2621440 files, 3615710/10485760 blocks

maui@maui:~$ sudo fsck /dev/sda3
fsck from util-linux 2.27.1
e2fsck 1.43.1 (08-Jun-2016)
Home: clean, 118028/11141120 files, 8278686/44564480 blocks

maui@maui:~$ sudo fsck /dev/sdb3
fsck from util-linux 2.27.1
e2fsck 1.43.1 (08-Jun-2016)
Seagate: clean, 12639/119480320 files, 182327886/477892608 blocks

maui@maui:~$ sudo fsck /dev/sda2 -f
fsck from util-linux 2.27.1
e2fsck 1.43.1 (08-Jun-2016)
Pass 1: Checking inodes, blocks, and sizes
Pass 2: Checking directory structure
Pass 3: Checking directory connectivity
Pass 4: Checking reference counts
Pass 5: Checking group summary information
Maui: 421369/2621440 files (0.1% non-contiguous), 3615710/10485760 blocks

maui@maui:~$ sudo fsck /dev/sda3 -f
fsck from util-linux 2.27.1
e2fsck 1.43.1 (08-Jun-2016)
Pass 1: Checking inodes, blocks, and sizes
Pass 2: Checking directory structure
Pass 3: Checking directory connectivity
Pass 4: Checking reference counts
Pass 5: Checking group summary information
Home: 118028/11141120 files (4.9% non-contiguous), 8278686/44564480 blocks

maui@maui:~$ sudo fsck /dev/sdb3 -f
fsck from util-linux 2.27.1
e2fsck 1.43.1 (08-Jun-2016)
Pass 1: Checking inodes, blocks, and sizes
Pass 2: Checking directory structure
Pass 3: Checking directory connectivity
Pass 4: Checking reference counts
Pass 5: Checking group summary information
Seagate: 12639/119480320 files (1.0% non-contiguous), 182327886/477892608 blocks
maui@maui:~$

When i rebooted out of the Live USB back into Maui, before logging into my normal account, i logged into my secondary account [created back when i last installed Maui on Tower, but hardly ever used]. Its systray volume controller widget still displays correctly, & seems to work normally. Once logged back into my real account, again the widget is broken as i already described. 

Surprisingly, i can now hear sound again [Clementine, live-stream music], but other than that pgm's own controller, i cannot control Tower's sound now [coz of the broken widget]. The system-sounds part of the control seems locked onto super-loud volume... when Thunderbird receives new mail, the alert is deafening & makes me jump out of my skin. 

What should i do pls? Should i try purging everything with pulseaudio in its name, & then reinstalling PA? 

[leszek]

Then it seems to be a configuration issue with your main user. Try removing the ~/.config/pulse/* files

[kdemeoz]

Fantastic, that fixed it. Thank you!!

I know there's no possible answer, but i wonder why the freeze corrupted one or more files in that directory? I also wonder, of course, why Tower suffered yet another freeze... but don't worry, i am not reopening that looooong thread again [apparently i simply need to accept that my Tower occasionally gets bored & likes to spice things up a little].

[leszek]

File corruption happens mostly when the file is currently written to and then comes to an abrupt stop. (like a freeze)