ALSA No Longer Sees MIDI Hardware
Moderators: MattKingUSA, khz
ALSA No Longer Sees MIDI Hardware
Today I found that my MIDI keyboards no longer show up in QjackCtl's Connection window (on the ALSA tab). The problem exists with a USB MIDI keyboard as well as with a standard 5-pin DIN MIDI keyboard (connected via a MIDI port on a PCI card). I believe I last used my MIDI keyboards over a month ago (February 18, 2015).
I reviewed the QjackCtl configuration and didn't notice that anything had changed. I have MIDI Driver set to "seq" and "Enable ALSA Sequencer support" is checked.
The JACK command line is: /usr/bin/jackd -dalsa -dhw:M2496 -r44100 -p256 -n2 -Xseq
When I run jackd manually it displays several messages, including "creating alsa_midi driver ..."
The problem doesn't appear to be related to QjackCtl. I ran Patchage (after starting jackd manually) and my keyboards didn't show up there, either.
I used amidi -l to verify that the keyboards were available to ALSA. I used amidi -p PORT -d to verify that ALSA MIDI was being received from both keyboards.
JACK MIDI seems to be OK. I tested with jack-keyboard, a virtual MIDI keyboard that sends JACK MIDI, and it worked fine.
So ALSA MIDI and JACK MIDI both appear to work. I'm guessing that something is broken with the ALSA to JACK MIDI bridge. I normally use JACK's built-in bridge, but today I also tried a2jmidid and it appears to have the same problem as the built-in bridge.
I use Arch Linux. Since my MIDI keyboards last worked I've updated existing software but I don't appear to have installed any new packages.
How can I diagnose this problem? Thanks!
I reviewed the QjackCtl configuration and didn't notice that anything had changed. I have MIDI Driver set to "seq" and "Enable ALSA Sequencer support" is checked.
The JACK command line is: /usr/bin/jackd -dalsa -dhw:M2496 -r44100 -p256 -n2 -Xseq
When I run jackd manually it displays several messages, including "creating alsa_midi driver ..."
The problem doesn't appear to be related to QjackCtl. I ran Patchage (after starting jackd manually) and my keyboards didn't show up there, either.
I used amidi -l to verify that the keyboards were available to ALSA. I used amidi -p PORT -d to verify that ALSA MIDI was being received from both keyboards.
JACK MIDI seems to be OK. I tested with jack-keyboard, a virtual MIDI keyboard that sends JACK MIDI, and it worked fine.
So ALSA MIDI and JACK MIDI both appear to work. I'm guessing that something is broken with the ALSA to JACK MIDI bridge. I normally use JACK's built-in bridge, but today I also tried a2jmidid and it appears to have the same problem as the built-in bridge.
I use Arch Linux. Since my MIDI keyboards last worked I've updated existing software but I don't appear to have installed any new packages.
How can I diagnose this problem? Thanks!
Logic Gate Music (retro electronic music and more...)
-
- Established Member
- Posts: 5
- Joined: Sat Oct 04, 2008 8:02 pm
- Location: Chi-town
- Contact:
Re: JACK No Longer Sees MIDI Hardware
Hi logicgate
Did you find out anymore information about this? I've run into the exact same issue. I"m on Arch amd64.
Thanks.
Bill.
Did you find out anymore information about this? I've run into the exact same issue. I"m on Arch amd64.
Thanks.
Bill.
EarthBeats.net
Re: JACK No Longer Sees MIDI Hardware
It's good to know I'm not alone!earthbeats wrote:Did you find out anymore information about this? I've run into the exact same issue. I"m on Arch amd64.
I'm on 64-bit Arch as well. I don't have any new information; I'm hoping someone can offer some hints.
Do you have any idea when the problem started for you? Unfortunately I hadn't tried MIDI input for around five weeks and so don't know when my problem started.
Logic Gate Music (retro electronic music and more...)
Re: JACK No Longer Sees MIDI Hardware
I could be wrong but I have always thought that the alsa tab of qjackctl is just a GUI for "aconnect", so you should see alsa seq clients in qjackctl even before jack is started.
I would check "aconnect -i -o"
I would check "aconnect -i -o"
Re: JACK No Longer Sees MIDI Hardware
Check if there might be some conflict between jackd, jackdbus, and maybe jack2-dbus.
For some reason, qjackctl has been silently failing to execute ANY scripts on my fedora machine. In the "execute script after start-up" box:
a2jmidid -e &
was giving the same result as:
xwhateverbadscriptx
No MIDI and no messages explaining why. Yet strangely all the patchbay I/O was connecting and working fine, and I could manually run a2jmidid from a terminal shell.
After manually stopping jackd and jackdbus, then restarting the GUI, jack2-dbus was able to start, and that seems to have fixed my scripting problem, for now. The problem with jackd and jackdbus will probably return when I reboot, so I might have to track down what nuisance script has been executing them.
Update: jack2-dbus and jackdbus seem to be the same thing on my machine. Perhaps 'jackd' was somehow persisting across reboots, from a few weeks ago when I did a re-install and had to play around with it. Rebooting tomorrow will tell all.
For some reason, qjackctl has been silently failing to execute ANY scripts on my fedora machine. In the "execute script after start-up" box:
a2jmidid -e &
was giving the same result as:
xwhateverbadscriptx
No MIDI and no messages explaining why. Yet strangely all the patchbay I/O was connecting and working fine, and I could manually run a2jmidid from a terminal shell.
After manually stopping jackd and jackdbus, then restarting the GUI, jack2-dbus was able to start, and that seems to have fixed my scripting problem, for now. The problem with jackd and jackdbus will probably return when I reboot, so I might have to track down what nuisance script has been executing them.
Update: jack2-dbus and jackdbus seem to be the same thing on my machine. Perhaps 'jackd' was somehow persisting across reboots, from a few weeks ago when I did a re-install and had to play around with it. Rebooting tomorrow will tell all.
Re: JACK No Longer Sees MIDI Hardware
Thanks, but my QjackCtl doesn't execute any scripts.Lech123 wrote:For some reason, qjackctl has been silently failing to execute ANY scripts on my fedora machine.
Logic Gate Music (retro electronic music and more...)
Re: JACK No Longer Sees MIDI Hardware
I ran aconnect -i and aconnect -o on multiple Linux installations on my machine. My MIDI devices did NOT show up in my two Arch Linux installations that are both up-to-date. The MIDI devices DID show up on an older Ubuntu-based system. Thanks for pointing me to aconnect.Pablo wrote:I could be wrong but I have always thought that the alsa tab of qjackctl is just a GUI for "aconnect", so you should see alsa seq clients in qjackctl even before jack is started.
I would check "aconnect -i -o"
Could this be an ALSA problem? My alsa-lib and alsa-utils packages were recently updated from 1.0.28 to 1.0.29.
Logic Gate Music (retro electronic music and more...)
Re: JACK No Longer Sees MIDI Hardware
I am pretty sure that this is an alsa related problem and that it has nothing to do with jack or qjackctl.
I would check lsmod to see if snd_seq_midi is loaded in your system. For comparison, in my ubuntu system:
I would check lsmod to see if snd_seq_midi is loaded in your system. For comparison, in my ubuntu system:
Code: Select all
$lsmod |grep seq
snd_seq_midi 13324 0
snd_seq_midi_event 14899 1 snd_seq_midi
snd_rawmidi 30144 1 snd_seq_midi
snd_seq 61560 3 snd_seq_midi_event,snd_seq_midi
snd_seq_device 14497 3 snd_seq,snd_rawmidi,snd_seq_midi
snd_timer 29482 3 snd_hrtimer,snd_pcm,snd_seq
snd 69322 19 snd_hda_codec_realtek,snd_hrtimer,snd_hwdep,snd_timer,snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_pcm,snd_seq,snd_rawmidi,snd_hda_codec,snd_hda_intel,snd_seq_device,snd_seq_midi
Re: JACK No Longer Sees MIDI Hardware (ALMOST SOLVED)
Pablo, thank you so much for your help. This seems to be pointing to the solution.Pablo wrote:I am pretty sure that this is an alsa related problem and that it has nothing to do with jack or qjackctl.
I would check lsmod to see if snd_seq_midi is loaded in your system.
lsmod | grep snd_seq_midi returned nothing on my Arch systems. I was able to restore MIDI functionality by manually loading the missing module:
# modprobe snd_seq_midi
But of course it only lasts until reboot.
I've researched how to statically load a module at boot (by adding a file in /etc/modules-load.d/) but I'm guessing that's not the best solution. Is there a better solution? Note that Arch uses systemd. Thanks.
Logic Gate Music (retro electronic music and more...)
-
- Established Member
- Posts: 5
- Joined: Sat Oct 04, 2008 8:02 pm
- Location: Chi-town
- Contact:
Re: JACK No Longer Sees MIDI Hardware
Pablo, thank you so much for your help. This seems to be pointing to the solution.
lsmod | grep snd_seq_midi returned nothing on my Arch systems. I was able to restore MIDI functionality by manually loading the missing module:
# modprobe snd_seq_midi
That was the same issue for me. Thanks everyone for helping me fix this!
EarthBeats.net
Re: JACK No Longer Sees MIDI Hardware
Update: The problem is with the Linux kernel (probably starting at version 3.19).
There's an Arch Linux bug for it (#44286) that's currently closed but there's a request to re-open it. Me and earthbeats are not the only users affected by this! Hopefully the problem will get passed along to the kernel developers.
Until then, one workaround is to use modprobe to manually load snd_seq_midi, as described earlier in this thread.
By the way, the thread title is slightly wrong and I don't know how to change it. The problem is not really related to JACK; it should be "ALSA No Longer Sees MIDI Hardware".
There's an Arch Linux bug for it (#44286) that's currently closed but there's a request to re-open it. Me and earthbeats are not the only users affected by this! Hopefully the problem will get passed along to the kernel developers.
Until then, one workaround is to use modprobe to manually load snd_seq_midi, as described earlier in this thread.
By the way, the thread title is slightly wrong and I don't know how to change it. The problem is not really related to JACK; it should be "ALSA No Longer Sees MIDI Hardware".
Logic Gate Music (retro electronic music and more...)
- raboof
- Established Member
- Posts: 1855
- Joined: Tue Apr 08, 2008 11:58 am
- Location: Deventer, NL
- Has thanked: 50 times
- Been thanked: 74 times
- Contact:
Re: JACK No Longer Sees MIDI Hardware
Updatedlogicgate wrote:By the way, the thread title is slightly wrong and I don't know how to change it. The problem is not really related to JACK; it should be "ALSA No Longer Sees MIDI Hardware".
Re: ALSA No Longer Sees MIDI Hardware
Found a fix for this on my antegros (arch) box.
1) Create this file as root
/etc/modules-load.d/modules-load.conf
and
2) put this in it
snd_seq_midi
3) and then save it.
reboot.
voila!
so for me I opened a terminal and typed
sudo gedit /etc/modules-load.d/modules-load.conf
in it and then typed 'snd_seq_midi' in the gedit window which opened and then saved it and rebooted.
Hope that helps
1) Create this file as root
/etc/modules-load.d/modules-load.conf
and
2) put this in it
snd_seq_midi
3) and then save it.
reboot.
voila!
so for me I opened a terminal and typed
sudo gedit /etc/modules-load.d/modules-load.conf
in it and then typed 'snd_seq_midi' in the gedit window which opened and then saved it and rebooted.
Hope that helps
Re: ALSA No Longer Sees MIDI Hardware
Thanks.higltypig wrote:Found a fix for this on my antegros (arch) box.
1) Create this file as root
/etc/modules-load.d/modules-load.conf
and
2) put this in it
snd_seq_midi
3) and then save it.
reboot.
voila!
so for me I opened a terminal and typed
sudo gedit /etc/modules-load.d/modules-load.conf
in it and then typed 'snd_seq_midi' in the gedit window which opened and then saved it and rebooted.
Hope that helps
Similar information is on the Arch wiki (https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Kernel_modules). I had originally hoped that the problem would be fixed properly and that making this change wouldn't be necessary. I've now made this change and it works fine.
Note: There's nothing special about the file name listed as "modules-load.conf" above; the ".conf" suffix is required but the rest of the file name can be anything.
Logic Gate Music (retro electronic music and more...)
Re: ALSA No Longer Sees MIDI Hardware
Mate, you save my life, big thanks!!!higltypig wrote: ↑Thu Apr 30, 2015 1:15 pm Found a fix for this on my antegros (arch) box.
1) Create this file as root
/etc/modules-load.d/modules-load.conf
and
2) put this in it
snd_seq_midi
3) and then save it.
reboot.
voila!
so for me I opened a terminal and typed
sudo gedit /etc/modules-load.d/modules-load.conf
in it and then typed 'snd_seq_midi' in the gedit window which opened and then saved it and rebooted.
Hope that helps