On Sun, May 16, 2010 at 7:12 PM, Fernando Lopez-Lezcano <nando@ccrma.stanford.edu> wrote:
> > Speaking of pulseaudio, http://old.nabble.com/Re:-Fwd:-jack2-p28288652.html is
> > a potential bad interaction between pulseaudio and jack (through
> > /etc/security/limits.conf, potential priority escalation issue).
...
Not that many "tweaks". The ability for all users to run jack with
realtime scheduling is "added" when you install the Planet CCRMA jack
package. That thread talks about some security problems that could arise
with the use of realtime scheduling, that is definitely not the source
of your problems.

I'm not so sure about that...  It might be a good idea to make sure it's not the same problem described here: http://old.nabble.com/Re:-Fwd:-jack2-p28296197.html

I experienced the similar lockup problems with jackd/qjackctl prior to my change ( http://old.nabble.com/help-w--qjackctl-locks-up-X-GUI-(perhaps-caused-by-dbus-or-kernel-2.6.32.11-99.fc12.x86_64)-to28221239.html#a28224046 ). Note that these lockups DO NOT require a reboot. What's happened is that the GUI/Xserver ends up getting locked up (via qjackctl) so if you SSH in to your box and "killall qjackctl" you'll unlock ( Make sure to also do "killall jackd" afterwards.).  Unfortunatelythe X server is so locked-up that you can't Alt-F2 and login via console and kill it that way.

HOWEVER -- in testing out a new $5.00 soundcard, I also experienced transient lock-ups again with jackd/qjackctl. The one thing that I could point to consistently as causing problems: having the wrong settings in 'alsamixer', i.e. when one of these is set to "on" you can neither play directly through ALSA, and jackd will hang:
 ( http://old.nabble.com/Re:-QXGEdit-(was-Re:-Suzuki-QC1-Qchord-Digital-Songcard-Guitar-)-p28541528.html )
** in alsamixer (F3-playback):
Item: "Multi Track Rate Locking" set to  [Off]
Item: "Multi Track Rate Reset" set to [Off]

Likewise, if the card is locked to the wrong sampling rate , jack may not be able to reset it if the above settings are wrong.... To make things worse, it seems like some of these settings are "sticky" and may require loading/unloading the driver module or rebooting for the change to take effect. 

Similar badness may be going on w/ your soundcard, which has been a source of longstanding problems in jack and alsa ... problems that often can be remedied via alsamixer magic: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=SiS+SI7012+jackd&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=  

-- Niels
http://nielsmayer.com