[linux-audio-user] can't get jack working in SuSE 9.1

I am having a lot of trouble getting Jack working under SuSE 9.1 It is very hard to keep track of the problem because the symptoms seem to change every now and then for no reason I can fathom, and because I have had other problems configuring soundcards in the past most (but not all) of which seem to have mysteriously sorted themselves out for no apparent reason. Therefore I will just give you for now a snapshot of the problem in its current (though fairly typical) manifestation for the sake of brevity. First of all you might need to know the following: 1. The problem has occurred with both the kernels I have used, each compiled from different (non-suse) sources. 2. I have 2 soundcards: an on-motherboard i810 and an Audigy 2. Only the Audigy 2 seems to work at the moment, although I would prefer it if both did. In the past various Linux installers have got them mixed up and caused a lot of pain and silence, including suse 9.1. Why suse 9.1 turned round and got it right the second time is completely beyond me. 3. I have been very careful to avoid arts-jack conflicts while troubleshooting. 4. The Agnula DeMuDi live CD got Jack working with the Audigy 2 card and I was able to make silly noises with it and route signals to my heart's content on the very same hardware. This is a variant of the Knoppix method for proving that on any given machine Windows is useless and not the machine. SuSE isn't useless, but it's been damn annoying in many ways. OK. So now to tell you what has been happening between me and Jack today: 1. I start qjackctl. As always, MIDI works but sound doesn't, and I get the following output: 15:35:56.092 Statistics reset. 15:35:56.331 Startup script... 15:35:56.332 killall artsd 15:35:56.385 MIDI connection graph change. 15:35:56.900 Startup script terminated successfully. 15:35:56.901 JACK is starting... 15:35:56.901 /usr/bin/jackd -R -t500 -dalsa -dhw:0 -r48000 -p512 -n2 15:35:56.905 JACK was started with PID=16459 (0x404b). jackd 0.94.0 Copyright 2001-2003 Paul Davis and others. jackd comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY This is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it under certain conditions; see the file COPYING for details loading driver .. apparent rate = 48000 creating alsa driver ... hw:0|hw:0|512|2|48000|0|0|nomon|swmeter|rt|32bit control device hw:0 configuring for 48000Hz, period = 512 frames, buffer = 2 periods Couldn't open hw:0 for 32bit samples trying 24bit instead Couldn't open hw:0 for 24bit samples trying 16bit instead Couldn't open hw:0 for 32bit samples trying 24bit instead Couldn't open hw:0 for 24bit samples trying 16bit instead JACK: unable to mlock() port buffers: Cannot allocate memory cannot lock down memory for RT thread (Cannot allocate memory) cannot lock down memory for RT thread (Cannot allocate memory) 15:35:57.107 MIDI connection change. 15:35:59.117 Could not connect to JACK server as client. 15:36:10.502 Could not connect to JACK server as client. 2. I try sudo qjackctl and I get the following output: 15:41:35.712 Statistics reset. 15:41:35.938 Startup script... 15:41:35.939 killall artsd 15:41:35.996 MIDI connection graph change. 15:41:36.508 Startup script terminated successfully. 15:41:36.508 JACK is starting... 15:41:36.509 /usr/bin/jackd -R -t500 -dalsa -dhw:0 -r48000 -p512 -n2 -s -S -i2 -o2 15:41:36.513 JACK was started with PID=16502 (0x4076). jackd 0.94.0 Copyright 2001-2003 Paul Davis and others. jackd comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY This is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it under certain conditions; see the file COPYING for details loading driver .. apparent rate = 48000 creating alsa driver ... hw:0|hw:0|512|2|48000|2|2|nomon|swmeter|soft-mode| 16bit control device hw:0 configuring for 48000Hz, period = 512 frames, buffer = 2 periods 15:41:36.715 MIDI connection change. 15:41:38.729 Server configuration saved to "/home/robert/.jackdrc" 15:41:38.730 Statistics reset. 15:41:38.805 Client activated. 15:41:38.806 Audio connection change. 15:41:38.809 Audio connection graph change. 3. I run qjackctl again as a normal user and I get the following output (different from before for some reason I can't fathom): 15:50:13.168 Statistics reset. 15:50:13.415 Startup script... 15:50:13.416 killall artsd 15:50:13.472 MIDI connection graph change. artsd: no process killed 15:50:13.985 Startup script terminated with exit status=256. 15:50:13.986 JACK is starting... 15:50:13.986 /usr/bin/jackd -R -t500 -dalsa -dhw:0 -r48000 -p512 -n2 -s -S -i2 -o2 15:50:13.990 JACK was started with PID=16590 (0x40ce). jackd 0.94.0 Copyright 2001-2003 Paul Davis and others. jackd comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY This is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it under certain conditions; see the file COPYING for details cannot create shm segment /jack-engine (Permission denied) cannot create engine control shared memory segment (Permission denied) cannot create engine 15:50:14.003 JACK was stopped successfully. 15:50:14.004 Shutdown script... 15:50:14.004 artsd & ALSA lib pcm_hw.c:549:(snd_pcm_hw_start) SNDRV_PCM_IOCTL_START failed: Broken pipe ALSA lib pcm_hw.c:549:(snd_pcm_hw_start) SNDRV_PCM_IOCTL_START failed: Broken pipe 15:50:14.193 MIDI connection change. 15:50:14.513 Shutdown script terminated successfully. 15:50:16.202 Could not connect to JACK server as client. In each case I have tried to start a jack application (e.g. Hydrogen) and got a warning that I would get no sound. What's more, the warning was in each case correct and I did indeed get no sound. To add to all this, earlier today I tried changing the sound server settings in the KDE control centre and every time I did anything X froze completely and I had to CTRL-ALT-BKSP out of it. However I seem finally to have succeeded in getting arts to choose jack rather than alsa as the audio device, but I don't really have a clue how I did it, and I have no less or more audio functionality than before. Erm... Any ideas on how to get jack being nice with my Audigy driver and the jack clients? Many thanks Robert P.S. I have just joined the list, but I have already used the archives on a number of occasions and so I would like to thank all of you for making this resource so useful. P.P.S. Nice one Brazil. The Brazillian popular music repertory as a public archive: that stuff is far more important than the Louvre. It should become the flagship UNESCO World Heritage Website or there's no justice in the World. Yeah. I know there actually isn't much justice in the world, but I can still believe in it can't I? -- Robert Persson is powered by Linux.