[linux-audio-user] Ardour sound output problems

[tim hall]

Does anyone have any useful insights into why ardour (0.99) so often starts up 
with no sound? - particularly if the last session was kicked out by jack 
(0.100.7). When it works it will run for a whole session, but I am having to 
reboot a little too often to get sound back for my liking. Restarting jack or 
alsa alone does not usually sort this. I am at such a loss to know how to 
debug this sort of problem

The reproducible error is that jack kicks out ardour after more than 3 minutes 
recording. No sound out of any other audio application, even after restarting 
alsa. Usually at this point logging in/out does not help either and I have to 
reboot to get sound back. I have checked all the obvious things like channel 
inputs and outputs.

However it is not always as predictable as this. I am using rather low-end 
hardware which may explain some things, like the short recording window.

I think I have been fairly thorough with my system configuration, but there 
are so many variables to take into account. The one unusual thing I am doing 
at the moment is running rtlimits with positive nice values for non audio 
apps rather than negging the audio ones. Whether that is actually making any 
difference to anything is rather hard to tell at this stage.

Linux xingta 2.6.16.5-realtim #1 PREEMPT Tue Apr 18 03:20:06 BST 2006 i686 
GNU/Linux model name	: Pentium III (Katmai)
cpu MHz		: 499.120 
MemTotal:       320792 kB
SwapTotal:     2000052 kB 

 0 [FM801AU        ]: FM801 - ForteMedia FM801-AU
                      ForteMedia FM801-AU at 0x1800, irq 10

Having to reboot after every take is a bit of a PITA. The problem seems to be 
ardour specific, but I am largely in the dark. What I could really do with is 
some guidance on how to go about troubleshooting and/or finding methods of 
getting the sound output back that do not involve rebooting.
-- 
cheers,

tim hall
http://glastonburymusic.org.uk/tim