[SOLVED] Unknown driver "alsa": Jack/Alsa suddenly not playing nice

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merlyn
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Re: Unknown driver "alsa": Jack/Alsa suddenly not playing nice

Post by merlyn »

I also have a Hoontech DSP24. I'm using it on Arch Linux and it works well. I call the little extra board the 'daughterboard'. As far as I know the daughterboard provides s/pdif connections. I don't use s/pdif, so the daughterboard isn't plugged in. I think the consumer/multi difference is for ice1712 cards that don't have all eight inputs and outputs wired up, like the Maudio Audiophile 24/96. In short if you have the breakout box plugged in you definitely want 'multi'.

jackd and jackdbus are different. If you want to use jackdbus, you don't want jackd. I'm using jackdbus because I like Cadence. If I look at htop the command is /usr/bin/jackdbus auto. .jackdrc is irrelevant to jackdbus. You could delete .jackdrc. I don't have a .jackdrc on this system, and it works. So the configuration must be stored in the xml file that Cadence creates. Starting jackd from the command line doesn't tell you why jackdbus isn't working.

The error sounds like you have a version of JACK compiled for ffado or other backend. What exact commands are you using to remove and re-install JACK?
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Re: Unknown driver "alsa": Jack/Alsa suddenly not playing nice

Post by Skippy »

Thanks for your input, all.

@Pablo: Cheers, mate. See you around. Think I'll be spending a bit more time here in future. :wink:
___

@Linuxmusician:

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cat /proc/asound/cards
 0 [DSP24          ]: ICE1712 - Hoontech SoundTrack Audio DSP24
                      Hoontech SoundTrack Audio DSP24 at 0xd0c0, irq 18
 1 [VirMIDI        ]: VirMIDI - VirMIDI
                      Virtual MIDI Card 1
My HDMI monitor is now missing from this list. It wasn't missing prior to issuing some of the commands given a few days ago. Not sure what's going on there, but there's another major problem on my plate!

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jackd -d alsa --device hw:0
jackdmp 1.9.12
Copyright 2001-2005 Paul Davis and others.
Copyright 2004-2016 Grame.
Copyright 2016-2017 Filipe Coelho.
jackdmp 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
Unknown driver "alsa"
Exactly the same error as I've been getting all along. I will add that I have tried your method previously to the same end. That's as far as it goes so can't give any more info there.

Of interest: The Hoontech comes in a few 'parts', if you follow. The card is 0, yes, but it has three devices according to this.

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$ aplay -l
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: DSP24 [Hoontech SoundTrack Audio DSP24], device 0: ICE1712 multi [ICE1712 multi]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: DSP24 [Hoontech SoundTrack Audio DSP24], device 1: ICE1712 consumer [ICE1712 consumer]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: DSP24 [Hoontech SoundTrack Audio DSP24], device 2: ICE1712 consumer (DS) [ICE1712 consumer (DS)]
  Subdevices: 6/6
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
  Subdevice #1: subdevice #1
  Subdevice #2: subdevice #2
  Subdevice #3: subdevice #3
  Subdevice #4: subdevice #4
  Subdevice #5: subdevice #5
So perhaps I could try your command like this.

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jackd -d alsa --device hw:0,0
What dya think? I think I'll give it a go ... I did and I get the same error: Unknown driver "alsa"
___

@merlyn: My Hoontech DSP24 has been working flawlessly for me, on a number of Xubuntu boxes, for over ten years. Never needed to do a thing. Just plug it in, it works, so does Jack. Until I switched my computer on a week ago. So this device is not new to me and yes, I do need the multi. I also know what settings I've had in Jack for years and those settings no longer work. Now, it's basically a 'dog's breakfast'.

This is the thing. The more things I try things, the further I think I'm moving away from the issue as I didn't do a thing, that I know of, to cause this in the first place. Wasn't messing with code/files. Didn't just do an update. No new kernel. Switched the machine on one morning and broken audio. I could, of course, be doing something to make things worse now, so I am trying to avoid changing code or fiddling with files too much (although I have looked at plenty to see if I could find an anomaly somewhere with my far from expert eyes).

All I can think of is that I was exploring some new software the night before. Drumgizmo (which I couldn't get working), Ardour, Pianoteq demo. Perhaps something there has thrown a spanner in the works. I closed jack with Pianoteq open and it didn't like it ... or something. Got me stumped.
What exact commands are you using to remove and re-install JACK?
The same commands that have been given to me here and that I have used from my net research previously.

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pkill -9 jackdbus
killall jackd
pulseaudio --kill
But I think you've hit on something. Trying to fix this, I'm pretty sure I uninstalled jack, downloaded the latest version from the jack audio site and installed that rather than the one in the repos. I thought at the time that I could be making trouble for myself, but was getting desperate!

That little faux pas couldn't have caused the original problem, but it may be preventing the original problem being fixed. Maybe that's why my stopping jack, uninstalling jack, and whatever other jack manipulations are not working. How do I identify if I have a stray version of the latest jack installed because that means I would have the latest jack and the one from the repos (Xubuntu 16.04) both installed.

Before all this happened, I wasn't using dbus at all, not jackdbus or dbus. They were both unticked in settings and that is how I have them now. Everything was working, jack was killing pulse and pulse was launching when jack was closed. Perfect. So, how do I use exclusively one or the other (or none?) because I guess trying to use both is going to be an issue.

To all: At the moment, I am using Bitwig with the ALSA driver and it is, surprisingly, working perfectly. All channels are shown on the Hoontech, identifies the correct device, shows MIDI. No issues. If only jack was working like that again. Still, at least I don't need to resort to Windows just yet (I have Bitwig there too, but restricted to two channels on the MBox Mini which has no MIDI, but it does have a functioning ASIO driver.

Thanks again to you all for your attempts to help. Really appreciated. As you've gathered, while Linux is far from new to me, working with audio in Linux is and I'm a babe in the woods there. I've done a heap of work editing video in Blender and used Jack with that, no problem, but audio? Na.

As for the current issue, been a week now and I am no further down the track. In fact, now the HDMI monitor is missing from everywhere as well, considerably worse! :roll: :twisted: :)
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Re: Unknown driver "alsa": Jack/Alsa suddenly not playing nice

Post by Skippy »

Bingo! Merlyn, it was this ...

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The error sounds like you have a version of JACK compiled for ffado or other backend.
... that got me thinking harder about downloading and installing jackd instead of using the one in the repos. I started digging around in the package manager (Synaptic) to see what I could find and then I checked in my Downloads folder and there was a folder in there with a matching version to the one I had in Synaptics.

So I got to looking for how to uninstall the version I'd downloaded. (The command was 'sudo ./waf uninstall'). Did that. Back to Synaptics. Tried to uninstall a few things in there and managed to break things. Fixed them, uninstalled what I could, then rebooted.

Launch Qjackctl and up it pops. No errors. I now figure the following message from the Qjackctl message window, which I was reading as an error previously, is probably situation normal ...

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Cannot connect to server socket err = No such file or directory
Cannot connect to server request channel
jack server is not running or cannot be started
JackShmReadWritePtr::~JackShmReadWritePtr - Init not done for 4294967295, skipping unlock
JackShmReadWritePtr::~JackShmReadWritePtr - Init not done for 4294967295, skipping unlock 
... because after that, things get back on track, jack finds everything and all is well. I then click 'Start' and no error messages. I check in Connect> Audio tab and ... I have twelve output channels and ten input channels!!!!! My heart skipped a beat. A week later, I'm there. I think.

I can start and stop Qjackctl and jack, but haven't tried rebooting the machine or running sound as yet. Will do that shortly. But I've just leapt a big hurdle, so thanks to you all for your help and particularly merlyn who asked a passing question that got me to thinking! :D

Will confirm complete success/failure within 24 hours. In the meantime, I'll start digging into why the heck my HDMI monitor audio is now missing from Pulse.

Question to the experienced: this forum the place to post a thread about my HDMI/Pulseaudio issue if I need to?
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Re: Unknown driver "alsa": Jack/Alsa suddenly not playing nice

Post by Linuxmusician01 »

I think that you are right if you say that the following error is the most serious one:

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Unknown driver "alsa"
Everything else that you try is in vain I'm afraid. Google tells me that there could be something wrong with Jack. That's strange since you say you changed nothing. Do you have "auto update" on? Try to remove and to re-install Jack like somebody said. Do this with your package manager. I still use 'ye olde Synaptic as my package manager. You use Ubuntu so you can install Synaptic like so:

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sudo apt-get install synaptic
If nothing else works, then try to re-install Linux.
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Re: Unknown driver "alsa": Jack/Alsa suddenly not playing nice

Post by merlyn »

Skippy wrote:The same commands that have been given to me here and that I have used from my net research previously.

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pkill -9 jackdbus
killall jackd
pulseaudio --kill
I meant something like sudo apt-get purge jack. I don't know exactly what the package is called on Xubuntu. Also try bluebell's jackd --help

If you purge JACK the package will be removed along with configuration files. Purge doesn't touch anything in your home folder though, so manually remove any JACK dot files. You could also purge Qjackctl, along with its file in your home folder in .config/rncbc.org/QjackCtl.conf.

Then install JACK and Qjackctl. Try from the repos first.

EDIT: Didn't see your most recent post for some reason. Glad you got it sorted!
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Re: Unknown driver "alsa": Jack/Alsa suddenly not playing nice

Post by Skippy »

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EDIT: Didn't see your most recent post for some reason. Glad you got it sorted!
Yes, sorry about that. Bit frustrating, actually. Because I'm a new member, every post I make is moderated and then eventually posted some hours later. Makes for a rather disjointed discussion, crossed wires, and lags. While it is inconvenient, I completely understand the reasons for the forum mods doing it this way. (I was on staff at another forum for about five years so am only too aware of the numbskulls that have nothing better to do than to waste everyone else's time by posting garbage and spoiling the party).

So yea. The jack issue is fixed and I spent last night working away and experimenting. Back to where I was a week ago so happy as a pig in the you know what.

As I say, only trouble now is that, in the process of fixing this, I seem to have 'disappeared' my monitor HDMI audio from Pulseaudio (and Alsa). I won't go into what I've found out there and my investigation as that would be off-topic. Think I'll post about that on Ubuntu Forums as it is a problem which may not be approprate here as not a lot to do with 'Linux musicians'. Unless they're using Pulse/Alsa for recording, which I'm not.

I will say this though. The OS does see the HDMI audio. See the output of the command below (I found the command in my travels in cyberspace and think it is a keeper!).

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$ echo "Sound cards recognized by the system:"; lspci -nn | grep --color=none '\[04[80][13]\]'; echo "Sound cards recognized by ALSA:"; lspci -nn | grep '\[04[80][13]\]' | while read line; do lspci -nnk | grep -A 3 '\[04[80][13]\]' | grep -e 'Kernel modules: ..*' -e '\[04[80][13]\]' | grep --color=none -F "$line"; done; echo "Sound cards recognized by ALSA, and activated:"; lspci -nn | grep '\[04[80][13]\]' | while read line; do lspci -nnk | grep -A 3 '\[04[80][13]\]' | grep -e 'Kernel drivers in use: ..*' -e '\[04[80][13]\]' | grep --color=none -F "$line"; done
Sound cards recognized by the system:
01:00.1 Audio device [0403]: NVIDIA Corporation GM204 High Definition Audio Controller [10de:0fbb] (rev a1)
03:00.0 Multimedia audio controller [0401]: VIA Technologies Inc. ICE1712 [Envy24] PCI Multi-Channel I/O Controller [1412:1712] (rev 02)
Sound cards recognized by ALSA:
01:00.1 Audio device [0403]: NVIDIA Corporation GM204 High Definition Audio Controller [10de:0fbb] (rev a1)
03:00.0 Multimedia audio controller [0401]: VIA Technologies Inc. ICE1712 [Envy24] PCI Multi-Channel I/O Controller [1412:1712] (rev 02)
Sound cards recognized by ALSA, and activated:
01:00.1 Audio device [0403]: NVIDIA Corporation GM204 High Definition Audio Controller [10de:0fbb] (rev a1)
03:00.0 Multimedia audio controller [0401]: VIA Technologies Inc. ICE1712 [Envy24] PCI Multi-Channel I/O Controller [1412:1712] (rev 02)

I guess it's the NVIDIA HD audio controller? Anyhow, I'll figure that one out eventually. Not as urgent as the jack issue was.

I just want to thank everyone for their input on this. Even though no-one could come up with a direct fix, talking about it with folks gave me new avenues to explore and eventually got me over the line. :D
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Re: Unknown driver "alsa": Jack/Alsa suddenly not playing nice

Post by Skippy »

It gets weirder. Immediately after posting the last one, I thought I'd have a quick look and see what I could do about the HDMI issue. Open Pulseaudio Volume Control and ... the HDMI is back!

So, that fixed itself exactly the same way jack seemed to break itself. I switch off the machine for twenty four hours.

I am taking my computer case apart tomorrow to check if there are any mischievous gremlins living the there and causing chaos. What I do know is that everything is now the same as it was a week ago, so I am happy and not going to bother questioning why any of this happened. All part of life's rich tapestry!

Thanks again.
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Re: Unknown driver "alsa": Jack/Alsa suddenly not playing nice

Post by Linuxmusician01 »

Skippy wrote:The jack issue is fixed and I spent last night working away and experimenting.
Can you tell us how you fixed it?
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Re: Unknown driver "alsa": Jack/Alsa suddenly not playing nice

Post by Skippy »

@LinuxMusician: Please see my post dated Wed Feb 20, 2019 6:02 pm.

Thanks. As I say, as a new member, everything is moderated before it is posted so there is lag and my posts have been going up 'out of time' with everyone else's. Confusing, but I completely understand why the forum has this protocol.

Consequently, you probably just missed that post where I explained what happened to fix. :)

PS: I had a look at the protocol for marking threads solved and have marked this thread as solved by editing the first post and appending [SOLVED]. Is that the done thing? Cheers.
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Re: Unknown driver "alsa": Jack/Alsa suddenly not playing nice

Post by Linuxmusician01 »

Skippy wrote: @LinuxMusician: Please see my post dated Wed Feb 20, 2019 6:02 pm.

Thanks. As I say, as a new member, everything is moderated before it is posted so there is lag and my posts have been going up 'out of time' with everyone else's. Confusing, but I completely understand why the forum has this protocol.

Consequently, you probably just missed that post where I explained what happened to fix. :)

PS: I had a look at the protocol for marking threads solved and have marked this thread as solved by editing the first post and appending [SOLVED]. Is that the done thing? Cheers.
Aha. That is: your second post from 20-2-2019. In that you write:
... that got me thinking harder about downloading and installing jackd instead of using the one in the repos. I started digging around in the package manager (Synaptic) to see what I could find and then I checked in my Downloads folder and there was a folder in there with a matching version to the one I had in Synaptics.

So I got to looking for how to uninstall the version I'd downloaded. (The command was 'sudo ./waf uninstall'). Did that. Back to Synaptics. Tried to uninstall a few things in there and managed to break things. Fixed them, uninstalled what I could, then rebooted.
You did not install Jack from the regular repositories (i.e. without your package manager). That figures. What you did is a re-install of Jack. Surprises me that that other version of Jack even worked for you in the beginning. Where did you download that version of Jack from? This is the official site: Glad you got it working now. In the future when people have Jack issues I'll ask them HOW they actually installed Jack.
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Re: [SOLVED] Unknown driver "alsa": Jack/Alsa suddenly not playing nice

Post by Skippy »

I installed jack from the repositories to start with, years ago, and always have. Before having to try to fix this, I had never installed it from anywhere else. Then one morning I got up, switched on the computer and jack was broken. I have no idea why. Nothing to do with me installing a downloaded jack from the one installed from the repo.

I spent over a week trying to fix this and, during that time, in my desperation I uninstalled jack from the repositories and downloaded and installed jack from the site you linked in your post. I received the exact same error message from memory. In any case, jack wouldn't start. So I removed, or at least thought I'd removed, the jack I'd downloaded and installed from their website and installed jack from the repos again.

A few days after that, I thought about the downloaded jack some more and dug deeper and found out how to REALLY remove that version of jack. In a terminal as that's how it was installed. Once I did that, I reinstalled jack from the repositories, rebooted and everything worked as it has been doing for years.

I have no idea how or why jack broke to start with, but I can guarantee you, it wasn't because I installed jack from the jack site. That came MUCH later when I was trying to fix the problem. I also don't have any idea why removing the manually installed jack fixed the original problem.

Go figure. In the meantime, I'm making great progress and lovin' Bitwig. Thanks for the input.
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