Distribution: Debian unstable Hardware Environment: AMD K7 800, 512MB RAM, Creative SoundBlaster, external (USB) Software Environment: KDE 3.3.1, arts or gstreamer Problem Description: The sound card stops working after a while (half an hour or so). The card has a blue light on top, which lights up when the usb-audio system starts and flashes when there is sound output. After the approx. half an hour, the light goes dark, sound stops and it is impossible to restart. Removing and reattaching the usb connection sometimes fixes the problem, almost always the light comes on again. When shutting down, the system hangs (black window, X cursor active). Unplugging the usb cable makes the system shut down. Strange :-) (I have also observed full lockup of my keyboard, but not the mouse, when I unplugg and reconnect the usb cable. Neither keyboard or mouse are connected through USB. This cannot be consistently reproduced, however.) Steps to reproduce: From fresh startup, start X and KDE, log on, start amarok (or other player), play some music, observe sound system freeze.
The following shows up in my syslog: kernel: uhci_hcd 0000:00:07.2: host system error, PCI problems? kernel: uhci_hcd 0000:00:07.2: host controller halted, very bad! Perhaps this is an USB issue?
Having considered this a bit more, I feel it is more likely to be an USB issue than ALSA, and has retagged it. I will happily provide any debugging information needed, I can consistently reproduce this. It appears much more frequently when there is significant disk activity.
Does this still happen on 2.6.13-rc6 or greator? If so, please reopen this bug.