Sean and Lee, Thanks for much for the ideas! A few moments ago someone on #lad on IRC suggested I try the snd-dummy module (modprobe snd-dummy). It worked like a champ - the log messages went away and the Flash component no longer crashed. At least, on EC2's Fedora 8 instance. Unfortunately, on another machine I need to get running (RHEL5), the logs continue to persist even when snd-dummy was installed. I will try both of your suggestions on that machine to see if it helps, but I just wanted to let you know about snd-dummy working out partially for me. If you're curious, this is the alsa-info output for the RHEL machine: http://www.alsa-project.org/db/?f=e8cc121e4c401a35969cd14e14b454c360037187 And this was on the one on the Fedora 8 machine (after having installed snd-dummy): http://www.alsa-project.org/db/?f=b2153e21c6fe272a72e9bd97a91c46f6452a38f3 Patrick On Wed, Jan 28, 2009 at 8:42 PM, Sean McNamara <smcnam@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Hi, > > On Wed, Jan 28, 2009 at 10:20 PM, Patrick Lightbody > <patrick@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: >> I have a strange request (which is why I'm sending directly to the dev >> list). I'm trying to run Flash video (v9 or v10) on Firefox 3 on a >> Fedora 8 image running on Amazon EC2. I don't actually want/need sound >> (it's of course technically not possible, since EC2 doesn't provide a >> sound card). Video playback (when watched through VNC) goes fine for a >> couple minutes, but then the browser and flash lock up entirely. I've >> looked for ways to tell Firefox and/or Flash to not send audio out, >> but I've come up empty so far. So now I'm hoping that fixing this >> error and putting in perhaps some sort of "no op" device might help >> out. >> > >> I'm not positive the error is related to ALSA, > > Neither am I -- but we can definitely give you the info you need to > test out null playback to see if it helps. It could still be a > video-related issue. > >> though the fact that >> there appear to be a ton of the following logs just before the lockup >> is suspicious: >> >> ALSA lib confmisc.c:768:(parse_card) cannot find card '0' >> ALSA lib conf.c:3513:(_snd_config_evaluate) function >> snd_func_card_driver returned error: No such file or directory >> ALSA lib confmisc.c:392:(snd_func_concat) error evaluating strings >> ALSA lib conf.c:3513:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_concat >> returned error: No such file or directory >> ALSA lib confmisc.c:1251:(snd_func_refer) error evaluating name >> ALSA lib conf.c:3513:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_refer >> returned error: No such file or directory >> ALSA lib conf.c:3985:(snd_config_expand) Evaluate error: No such file >> or directory >> ALSA lib pcm.c:2144:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM default >> ALSA lib pcm_hw.c:1240:(_snd_pcm_hw_open) Invalid value for card >> >> (these lines repeat over and over again until the crash happens, then >> it stops promptly) > > Yeah, you will want to eliminate such problems regardless of whether > they are immediately fatal. The software (Flash) could have memory > leaks or something if it fails to get a soundcard. > >> >> As you can see by the alsa-info output at the following URL, I don't >> have any running snd modules: >> >> http://www.alsa-project.org/db/?f=6b2431d0564b3638cdb798a6d1a21eb73982588c >> >> Similarly, I don't have any sound-related devices installed (ie: >> /dev/audio, etc). My hope in emailing this list is that there may be a >> solution that causes ALSA to no-op the requests that Firefox/Flash >> send it's way, potentially solving the lockup I'm experiencing. > > Option 1 (less obvious unless you know where to look, but certainly > viable): http://www.alsa-project.org/alsa-doc/alsa-lib/pcm_plugins.html > <--- look up the "Null" plugin here. Drop a null plugin into > /etc/asound.conf as the default: > > pcm.!default { > type null > } > > This is exactly the "no-op" soft PCM that you want. AFAIK all the APIs > against this just return saying "OK, I've done it", and the > configuration space is as flexible as possible. > > Option 2, which was my first guess before I remembered the link above: > You could install PulseAudio and either pipe the sound over the > network to your host, or load a null sink, then use ALSA<->pulse. > > Alternatively, you could provide "support" for no-op sounds from both > PulseAudio _and_ ALSA clients by implementing both these options. > > HTH, > > Sean > >> >> I would really appreciate any ideas that could be shared. Thank you very much! >> >> Patrick >> _______________________________________________ >> Alsa-devel mailing list >> Alsa-devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx >> http://mailman.alsa-project.org/mailman/listinfo/alsa-devel >> > _______________________________________________ Alsa-devel mailing list Alsa-devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx http://mailman.alsa-project.org/mailman/listinfo/alsa-devel
