Killing pulseaudio to run pSX

[DeathOnJuice]

Ever since the upgrade to Jaunty (and possibly Intrepid, since I never used this program on Intrepid), the pSX emulator called pSX has not been working. Startup brings this error:

[src/linux/sound.cpp, line 215]: 'snd_pcm_hw_params_set_access(pcm_handle,hwparams, SND_PCM_ACCESS_MMAP_INTERLEAVED)' returned 'Invalid argument'
Segmentation fault

If I kill pulseaudio as suggested by many, when I start the program again (or any program with sound I think), pulseaudio opens back up so it gets the same error.

NOTE: THE FOLLOWING IS CONFUSING ME. pSX works under sudo even when pulseaudio is running sometimes, but sometimes it gives the same error as without sudo until I kill pulse:

However, if I kill pulseaudio then run sudo pSX, it works. I think this is because trying to open pulseaudio with sudo gives an error about how it's not intended to be run by root, so pSX can't reopen it. Regardless, I don't want to run it as sudo, for security and because then I have to use root's home directory.

Does anyone know how to keep pulseaudio from reopening when I run pSX, or make pSX work with pulseaudio?

One thing that may be useful: I play another game called N through Wine, which was freezing up every few seconds. Turned out that every time it played a sound, it was freezing (an entry popped up in the program paman of ALSA plug-in [wine-preloader] then quickly disappeared). If I kill pulseaudio then open N before doing anything else, it restarts pulseaudio, but the game works. Not sure if I could get a similar effect for pSX. As it is, so I don't have to do that, I have wine using the OSS instead of ALSA plugin.

[DeathOnJuice]

Bump.

[DeathOnJuice]

And again.

[DeathOnJuice]

Bump.

[damis648]

Try running it with the padsp wrapper:
padsp psx

[DeathOnJuice]

It returned the following:


Segmentation fault

[DeathOnJuice]

Bump.

[Grishka]

it looks like pSX is having trouble with soundcard detection. here's how I managed to workaround this on Jaunty amd64. I did have to run pSX with sudo, but only once. here's the deal:

1. kill pulseaudio (sudo killall pulseaudio)
2. run pSX as root (sudo ./pSX)
3. find the "sound" tab in the configuration and switch the "device" setting from "default" to your soundcard (plughw:0,0 in my case). apply. close pSX.
4 open /root/.pSX/psx.ini in a text editor (gksudo gedit /root/.pSX/psx.ini). find the "device" string under [Sound] section (I have "b7d317a4" there).
5. paste this string into the relevant section in ~/.pSX/psx.ini, in place of all zeroes. save. if you don't have this file in your user directory, run pSX and cancel just after choosing language, on the bios selection screen. pSX should save settings then.

now pSX runs fine even after reboot.

[TheIdiotThatIsMe]

it looks like pSX is having trouble with soundcard detection. here's how I managed to workaround this on Jaunty amd64. I did have to run pSX with sudo, but only once. here's the deal:

1. kill pulseaudio (sudo killall pulseaudio)
2. run pSX as root (sudo ./pSX)
3. find the "sound" tab in the configuration and switch the "device" setting from "default" to your soundcard (plughw:0,0 in my case). apply. close pSX.
4 open /root/.pSX/psx.ini in a text editor (gksudo gedit /root/.pSX/psx.ini). find the "device" string under [Sound] section (I have "b7d317a4" there).
5. paste this string into the relevant section in ~/.pSX/psx.ini, in place of all zeroes. save. if you don't have this file in your user directory, run pSX and cancel just after choosing language, on the bios selection screen. pSX should save settings then.

now pSX runs fine even after reboot.

Got to step two and it still crashes on me. It mentions PulseAudio, even though I killed it, so it seems to be restarting it anyways.

E: core-util.c: Home directory /home/anthony not ours.
E: core-util.c: Home directory /home/anthony not ours.
ALSA lib pulse.c:272:(pulse_connect) PulseAudio: Unable to connect: Connection refused

[src/linux/sound.cpp, line 582]: 'snd_pcm_open(&pcm_handle,dev->info->device_fname,SND_PCM_STREAM_PLAYBACK,0)' returned 'Connection refused'
pSX: pcm_params.c:2259: snd_pcm_hw_refine: Assertion `pcm && params' failed.
Aborted

[sultanoswing]

Grishka, your solution worked for me, thanks!! :popcorn:

[dragos240]

I suggest the following, open up a terminal and c+p this:

sudo apt-get remove pulseaudio

it fixed all my pulseaudio errors!

[lkraemer]

Here are two posts that may help.

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1149634&page=2
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=4928900

lkraemer

[TheIdiotThatIsMe]

I tried completely ripping out PulseAudio (completely out of my system, and rebooted to ALSA), AND running it as sudo, but I still get the same error :confused:

[DeathOnJuice]

Here are two posts that may help.

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1149634&page=2
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=4928900

lkraemer

The last step of the second link didn't work (I got the Connection refused error and the fix didn't work), but it still seemed to fix pSX. Thanks so much!

I also apparently should have done a clean install.

[sp0tz]

that fix got pSX running on a non root account, but it still crashes before it can load a game. All the games work fine with root privileges, but whenever I load a disk w/o root, I get the error "CD not usable: Failed to open file"

hm.... never mind, it won't work with root, either. I know this image has worked before. It works with pcsx (but the sound's all choppy)

uh... so... running
/path/to/pSX /path/to/game.bin
runs fine, (flawlessly so far for about about two hours of play) but running
/path/to/pSX
or just doubleclicking the binary and 'inserting' the 'disk' from there results in that "cd not usable: failed to open file" error. command line:ftw?
I guess now I just have to make a bunch of launchers?

[rafe101]

I tried Grishka's fix and it works but I have no sound from pSX now. It's running and opening games at least—which I'm happy about—but it'd be nice to get the sound going.

Does anyone have any idea how to fix this?

[Arkanus]

I tried Grishka's fix and it works but I have no sound from pSX now. It's running and opening games at least—which I'm happy about—but it'd be nice to get the sound going.

Does anyone have any idea how to fix this?
You have to select the analog output in the pSX sound config (mine is plughw:0,0) and you will get sound, once you do the fix you will not need to run pSX as root, just as normal user

[rafe101]

I did that. It did allow me to run it without having to call it with sudo, but I had no sound. Uninstalling Pulseaudio seems to work fine though.

[h0rnman]

The solution with Lucid (10.04) seems to be a bit different. Instead of killing the process, I did:


sudo kill -STOP <<pid for the pulseaudio application>>

to stop the pulseaudio process, then I ran:

sudo ./pSX


Once that loaded, I went into the configuration and changed the Audio device from 'Default' to the actual audio device being used. I then existed out of pSX, copied the Device=XXXXXXXX from the /root/.pSX/psx.ini file to the /home/xxxx/.pSX/psx.ini file. Once that had been done, the pSX executable ran fine, even with pulseaudio restarted.
The only oddity I noticed was a bunch of sound:underrun messages being thrown to the terminal, but everything appears to work correctly.

Hope this helps!

[kiiski]

Thank you guys. This thread helped me a lot!