Freezes after 30 mins

[skrul]

Hey all --

This is a little strange but I was wondering if anyone else has had this experience as it seems fairly reproducible. Seems like every time I used jambox and Jamulus, about 30 minutes in the VNC display freezes and my Jamulus connection begins to distort. I then unplug / plug the raspberry pi to restart it, reconnect, and the everything is fine for the rest of the session (1+ hours).

This has happened to me with both 1.4.0 and 1.5.0. I'm using a raspberry pi 4 with a Yamaha MG10XU.

Any thoughts on this? Thanks!

[kdoren]

As part of my testing, I run sessions for days at a time using different interfaces with no problems. So I am inclined to think your problem is an issue with either your Pi or more likely your mixer or it's compatibility with linux. However that should not cause VNC to freeze. If you have access to another Pi4, you should see if it has same problem.

There do seem to be some reports of problems using that mixer with linux:
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=263745
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hxej_L-gM60

This user reports it working: https://linuxmusicians.com/viewtopic.php?t=21583

It runs on Linux without any real problems. However, it doesn't support more than two channels of audio (in x2 / out x 2). The switches you need to activate for the USB I/O for recording purposes can be a bit confusing and feedback may occur until you learn the right configuration for your needs :)

I had a small problem with the MG10XU when I was running JACK together with Pulseadio, as audio would cut off on streams associated with unfocused windows after a few seconds. The solution would be to either modify the "idle" settings in the Pulseaudio configuration files or just keep the Pavucontrol window open at all times. This problem might have been simply due to my choice of DE (LXDE / Openbox).

You could try killing pulseaudio ("pulseaudio -k"), but I think that will cause problems with jack audio.
To try it with as suggested with pavucontrol open:

sudo apt install pavucontrol
pavucontrol

I doubt this will help, but FYI there is a newer kernel installed but not activated on Jambox 1.5.0. There have been changes to the usb audio section but I don't believe any of them would affect your model.

If you want to try the 5.15.10 kernel, edit the file /boot/config.txt:

sudo leafpad /boot/config.txt

At the bottom of the file, there are sections for 4 different kernels. one section begins with [all], and the other 3 begin with [none].
To switch kernels, change [all] to [none] above the 5.10.74-llat kernel section.
Then, change [none] to [all] above the 5.15.10-llat kernel section.
Be careful, because a typo will make the card fail to boot (in that case you need to edit the file on a PC, or burn a new card).
Then reboot.

[skrul]

Hey @kdoren thank you for such a thoughtful response. Except for this one issue it has been very solid with jambox so I'm not sure it deserves a 1+ hour youtube rant :)

And I agree the symptoms are strange. It seems that Jamulus continues to work after VNC freezes though it gets very strange and distorted. Additionally, the other folks on the server report seeing my client appear to be connecting multiple times simultaneously which sounds like Jamulus losing the connection to the server and reconnecting a few times automatically. Maybe a network issue? Maybe i'll grab another Pi4 and give it a try.

I'll also experiment with the new kernel today and see if I can reproduce the issue.

[kdoren]

Yes, could also be a networking problem. I'd suggest swapping out the ethernet cable (I have been bitten by this).

Could also be a router issue, I have been bitten by that also (old buggy firmware on Netgear Orbi would change the IP address on the RPi). Check if a router firmware update is available.

[skrul]

That is interesting, I also am using a Netgear Orbi (firmware v2.7.3.22 which seems to be up to date) but there is evidence in my browser history that the IP address did change during yesterday's session:

I went ahead and set up an "address reservation" for the jambox in the Orbi settings to hopefully prevent this from happening again. I'll be very happy if this was indeed the issue!

[kdoren]

They may have had a regression. The problem that I experienced was that when DHCP lease was renewed on wired ethernet, netgear orbi assigned a different IP address instead of renewing the lease on the existing IP. That is a definite bug, which I fixed by updating the orbi firmware. This was at my sister's house, last March, so I don't know if that bug has returned, or which version fixed it.

Your DHCP reservation should avoid the problem though.

[kdoren]

You might need to also give a DHCP reservation to your laptop. I don't know if the bug affected wireless, but if your laptop changes IP address during a noVNC session, that would likely cause your noVNC serssion to have problems....

[kdoren]

Your box had 3 different local IP addresses in < 3 hours that urlrelay knows about (which is on reboot).

It's not clear if IP address changed during a session. If RPi was running and did a reboot, router should give it same IP address.
If RPi was off for a while, and lease time was set to be short, and lease expired while RPi was off, it would be normal to assign a different IP address. It's normal for a router to assign long lease times (i.e. 1-7 days), 3 IPs in <3 hours is just wrong.

I believe you can check/set lease duration in orbi. but client will renew lease more often, which is when I think the orbi can mess up and assign a new one.

Is your RPI plugged into the base unit? Hopefully yes, you don't want wireless in the audio path.
I presume base and slave are on same firmware, but that might be worth checking.

Hopefully your DHCP reservation is a good workaround.

[kdoren]

@skrul now that I think about it, I first tried DHCP reservation on NetGear Orbi, but that did not work right until I updated the firmware. So the workaround for the NetGear Orbi bug appears to require both updated firmware and DHCP reservation.

[skrul]

@kdoren yes I did experiment with this a bit yesterday and found that the jambox didn't pick up the DHCP reservation and got assigned a new IP address. I rebooted the Orbi and tried again and it worked the second time.

FWIW I currently have it plugged into a satellite which is on a wired backhaul.

If it continues to be a problem I might try making the DHCP pool smaller and assigning a static IP address to the jambox itself.

[kdoren]

@skrul

If it continues to be a problem I might try making the DHCP pool smaller and assigning a static IP address to the jambox itself.

That should work if you get stuck. I didn't want to do this because I move my boxes around - I didn't want my build machine to break when I returned home. DHCP reservation is definitely the preferred way to do this if the Orbi firmware cooperates.

[skrul]

@kdoren just a quick update here, used the jambox for about two hours yesterday and it was rock solid 🥳