#901148 timidity: upgrading to 2.14.0-2 broke sound via pulseaudio

Package:
timidity
Source:
timidity
Description:
Software sound renderer (MIDI sequencer, MOD player)
Submitter:
Arthur Marsh
Date:
2020-12-07 10:18:03 UTC
Severity:
important
Tags:
#901148#5
Date:
2018-06-09 13:11:32 UTC
From:
To:
Dear Maintainer,

*** Reporter, please consider answering these questions, where appropriate ***

   * What led up to the situation?

I upgraded to 2.14.0-2, shut down and rebooted to load a new kernel,
sound working outside KDE but not inside KDE, reverted to earlier kernel,
problem persisted, downgraded to timidity 2.13.2-41+b1 and rebooted,
sound was again working in KDE although some sound settings had sound muted
on left channel.

   * What exactly did you do (or not do) that was effective (or
     ineffective)?
   * What was the outcome of this action?
   * What outcome did you expect instead?

*** End of the template - remove these template lines ***

#901148#10
Date:
2018-06-11 05:14:41 UTC
From:
To:
Dear Maintainer,

*** Reporter, please consider answering these questions, where appropriate ***

   * What led up to the situation?
   * What exactly did you do (or not do) that was effective (or
     ineffective)?

Upgrading to timidity 2.14.0-3 and running

service timidity restart

worked, but I am at a loss as to why timidity could stop all sound working
in KDE plasma and not just software MIDI playback.

   * What was the outcome of this action?
   * What outcome did you expect instead?

*** End of the template - remove these template lines ***

#901148#15
Date:
2018-06-11 06:40:04 UTC
From:
To:
Dear Maintainer,

*** Reporter, please consider answering these questions, where appropriate ***

   * What led up to the situation?

restarting pc, starting KDE plasma desktop - no sound in KDE plasma desktop

   * What exactly did you do (or not do) that was effective (or
     ineffective)?

service timidity restart

from within KDE plasma desktop

   * What was the outcome of this action?
   * What outcome did you expect instead?

*** End of the template - remove these template lines ***

#901148#20
Date:
2018-06-11 07:53:54 UTC
From:
To:
Dear Maintainer,

*** Reporter, please consider answering these questions, where appropriate ***

   * What led up to the situation?
   * What exactly did you do (or not do) that was effective (or
     ineffective)?
   * What was the outcome of this action?
   * What outcome did you expect instead?

Doing further tests, if I downgraded from 2.14.0-2 to 2.13.2-41+b1 then did

service timidity restart
service lxdm restart

sound output in KDE plasma run from lxdm worked

if I upgraded back to 2.14.0-2 and did

service timidity restart
service lxdm restart

sound output in KDE plasma run from lxdm failed

*** End of the template - remove these template lines ***

#901148#25
Date:
2018-06-12 07:21:26 UTC
From:
To:
Same problem here on Debian unstable with LXDE. It seems timidity is
claiming the sound device before PulseAudio can.

     # fuser -v /dev/snd/*
                          USER        PID ACCESS COMMAND
     /dev/snd/controlC0:  timidity    635 F.... timidity
     /dev/snd/pcmC0D0p:   timidity    635 F...m timidity
     /dev/snd/seq:        timidity    635 F.... timidity
     /dev/snd/timer:      timidity    635 f.... timidity

     # systemctl stop timidity
     # fuser -v /dev/snd/*
     #

After logging in again as a regular user, pulseaudio daemon starts
again and now is able to claim the sound device. Now sound works again.

HTH,
Peter Nowee

#901148#30
Date:
2018-06-12 08:49:55 UTC
From:
To:

#901148#39
Date:
2018-06-20 18:20:46 UTC
From:
To:
Can confirm, i have the same exact issue. Solved it temporarily by stopping
timiddity, and then running on the terminal "pulseaudio -k"

#901148#44
Date:
2018-06-23 00:51:46 UTC
From:
To:
Forgive my ignorance, but I don't see what reasoning drove reducing this bug's
severity. https://release.debian.org/testing/rc_policy.txt says "[A]n issue is
release critical if it: [...] * makes unrelated software on the system (or the
whole system) break". I was bitten by this bug today (in testing), and from my
perspective, the timidity package broke (important, IMO) functionality of a
suite of other unrelated packages. That seems to qualify for at least serious
(and therefore RC) severity. Am I missing something?

Thanks,
Brendon

#901148#49
Date:
2018-06-23 16:14:39 UTC
From:
To:
Hi, I can also confirm I'm affected by this and agree that the severity
should be grave. It's not even trivial to debug where the problem comes
from, I even wrongly filled a bug to the linux-image since it seems to be
racy too, so sometimes (I guess if timidity starts too late in the boot
sequence) it could work, and I was unlucky enough that when I rebooted
with the previous kernel it worked.

#901148#54
Date:
2018-06-24 19:47:10 UTC
From:
To:
Fully agree.  Was also bitten by this bug and it cost me several hours of
google debugging, since I normally don't worry about sound -- it has "just
worked" for quite some time now.  And kudos for all those who made that
happen!

#901148#63
Date:
2018-06-26 09:37:13 UTC
From:
To:
We believe that the bug you reported is fixed in the latest version of
timidity, which is due to be installed in the Debian FTP archive.

A summary of the changes between this version and the previous one is
attached.

Thank you for reporting the bug, which will now be closed.  If you
have further comments please address them to 901148@bugs.debian.org,
and the maintainer will reopen the bug report if appropriate.

Debian distribution maintenance software
pp.
Bastien Roucariès <bastien@portable-bastien-2018.roucaries.eu> (supplier of updated timidity package)

(This message was generated automatically at their request; if you
believe that there is a problem with it please contact the archive
administrators by mailing ftpmaster@ftp-master.debian.org)
Format: 1.8
Date: Tue, 26 Jun 2018 11:01:52 +0200
Source: timidity
Binary: timidity timidity-interfaces-extra timidity-el timidity-daemon
Architecture: source
Version: 2.14.0-4
Distribution: unstable
Urgency: high
Maintainer: Debian QA Group <packages@qa.debian.org>
Changed-By: Bastien Roucariès <bastien@portable-bastien-2018.roucaries.eu>
Description:
 timidity   - Software sound renderer (MIDI sequencer, MOD player)
 timidity-daemon - runs TiMidity++ as a system-wide MIDI sequencer
 timidity-el - Emacs front end to Timidity++
 timidity-interfaces-extra - TiMidity++ extra user interfaces
Closes: 870338 901148 901931
Changes:
 timidity (2.14.0-4) unstable; urgency=high
 .
   * QA upload
   * Suggest only daemon that is pulled by kde, breaking audio output.
     (Closes: #901148, #901931).
   * Bug fix: "CVE-2017-11546 CVE-2017-11547", thanks to
     Salvatore Bonaccorso (Closes: #870338).
Checksums-Sha1:
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 6b88aa373b03b60b072982062c560606120ba22c 29388 timidity_2.14.0-4.debian.tar.xz
 8863efda0d1b57b02ce2814f88e4311e7b2200c7 6058 timidity_2.14.0-4_source.buildinfo
Checksums-Sha256:
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 188808d2c7737785cfe579f7fc6c220306c97c15e44fa768a0ee964b8d669660 29388 timidity_2.14.0-4.debian.tar.xz
 f6712723db70f00e67b887e862240dd24951637ad05c725ba62ea19b05a0c121 6058 timidity_2.14.0-4_source.buildinfo
Files:
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 83ee5b57055d7de6b8004a101028f336 29388 sound optional timidity_2.14.0-4.debian.tar.xz
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#901148#72
Date:
2018-07-06 15:06:31 UTC
From:
To:
I still experience the same issue, i can solve it by stopping timidity:
systemctl stop timidity

2018-06-20 15:20 GMT-03:00 lugarci1 <lugarci2@gmail.com>:

#901148#77
Date:
2018-07-12 08:37:14 UTC
From:
To:
Quack,

Not sure to understand what the changelog says about the fix but I'm
running 2.14.0-8 and still experiencing the problem.
Randomly Timidity holds the sound card device before Pulseaudio and I
have no sound.

\_o<

#901148#86
Date:
2018-07-26 09:33:41 UTC
From:
To:
Dear Maintainer,

*** Reporter, please consider answering these questions, where appropriate ***

After a couple of weeks away I forgot that I had held off upgrading to
timidity 2.14.0-2 and later, and spent several hours again trying to
figure out why I could get sound from a virtual console but not from within
a desktop.

Still a problem here with 2.14.0-8.

*** End of the template - remove these template lines ***

#901148#91
Date:
2018-08-03 12:47:44 UTC
From:
To:
severity 901148 critical
found 901148 2.14.0-8
thanks

Hi,

I just spend 1 hour of time debugging my sound playback to finally
discover it was just the timidity package that get the sound device blocked.

I raise the severity of this bug to critical because it clearly render
other packages unusable starting by pulseaudio itself.

Regards,
Thomas Pierson

#901148#106
Date:
2019-03-19 07:20:32 UTC
From:
To:
Same experience here.  The first warning was the mute button LED on my
Thinkpad X220 no longer lit when pressed.  Initially I thought it
might be a failure of pulseaudio's udev detection, but static
configuration also provided negative results.  Finally I found this
bug, purged timidity, and as soon as the daemon was killed received a
desktop notification of found device.

Agreed.


Cheers,
Nicholas

#901148#111
Date:
2019-04-07 07:33:34 UTC
From:
To:
Having been hit by this on Buseter Testing before, I did some
investigation. Here are my findings:

Conditions for this bug to appear are:

   * timidity-daemon is installed
   * timidity service (from the timidity-daemon package) is enabled or
     timidity gets started by hand
   * No midi device is provided by the kernel

Only if all of these these conditions are fulfilled at the same time,
this comes into effect.

A quick test on Stretch with the timidity service enabled did not reveal
the bug. However, timidity was not running after boot, and I didn't find
the reason why. After starting it by hand, pulseaudio got unusable, just
like it does on Buster. So my guess is that the bug was actually present
in Stretch, it just did not show due to timidity not starting properly
at boot.

A removal of timidity-daemon on affected systems is sufficient. It is
set to "Suggests" instead of "Recommends" with timidity as of 2.14.0-8,
so the majority of people who install games or music programs that pull
in timidity will no longer be affected.

People who will be affected are those that got timidity-daemon installed
in Stretch by the "Recommends" dep, and then upgraded to Buster. Even an
apt autoremove will keep timidity-daemon installed.

One way to escape this bug is to have a midi device available in the
system, which can also be snd_virmidi. But I don't consider this a clean
solution, because it will probably interfere for people who have real
midi hardware.

What other options do we have? Simply keep it as-is and document it in
the the upgrade manual? Or do we have some mechanism available that
would remove timidity-daemon if it was installed automatically? Any
other ideas?

#901148#116
Date:
2019-04-13 09:19:00 UTC
From:
To:
Hi Bastien,

Could you have a look at this bug (in particular) the mail below.

The bug has been tagged buster-ignore, but we would still like a more
user-friendly solution (even if just in the form of a NEWS entry, so
upgrading people are not caught unaware).

Thanks,
~Niels

#901148#127
Date:
2019-05-15 07:57:57 UTC
From:
To:
Hi,

I'm still affected by this (must close timidity and restart pulseaudio
after a reboot), and judging from the comment
https://superuser.com/questions/1312163/dummy-output-instead-of-audio-device-on-debian-9/1346784?noredirect=1#comment2168375_1346784
I'm not the only person affected. So afaict the bug is still present.

#901148#132
Date:
2019-07-21 07:14:34 UTC
From:
To:
Hi,

This affects me too after I upgraded to Buster.
The Superuser link Antoine Amarilli is giving suggests that timidity is
started at system level, while pulseaudio is started at the user level.
Maybe you could change that behaviour?

Best

#901148#137
Date:
2019-07-30 18:14:10 UTC
From:
To:
Dear Maintainer,

*** Reporter, please consider answering these questions, where appropriate ***

I upgraded from Stretch to Buster and sound completely disappeared.
Removing Timidity fixed the problem but made me unable to use gnu solfege as it
depends on timidity.
*** End of the template - remove these template lines ***

#901148#142
Date:
2019-07-31 18:29:59 UTC
From:
To:
Hi Alain,

The sound is broken by timidity-daemon, not the timidity package
itself.
So you should try to install GNU Solfege and check that timidity-daemon
is not installed (timidity "suggests" timidity-daemon so it should not
be installed automatically).

Best,
François

#901148#147
Date:
2020-02-19 18:31:36 UTC
From:
To:
After many tests I have found the solution about the
bugs around timidity-daemon and pulseaudio.

timidity-daemon installs an system-wide daemon. But
pulseaudio is a user-wide "daemon".

With my appended patch the system-wide daemon will be
removed and a xdg/autostart script will be installed.

After that timidity together with pulseaudio runs
perfectly.
--- Have a nice day. Joachim (Germany)
#901148#152
Date:
2020-02-19 20:36:08 UTC
From:
To:
Now I have made new Debian packages for buster and testing:
https://www.joonet.de/sources/timidity/

Please test these package. All should be fine.
--- Have a nice day. Joachim (Germany)
#901148#157
Date:
2020-02-20 19:04:47 UTC
From:
To:
Now I have made new Debian packages for buster and testing
including my patch:

https://www.joonet.de/sources/timidity/
--- Have a nice day. Joachim (Germany)
#901148#164
Date:
2020-12-03 14:09:16 UTC
From:
To:
Am 01.12.20 um 18:53 schrieb Elimar Riesebieter:

Yes - timidity is the reason. Thank you very much!
Stopping timidity activates the intern sound.

I have no idea when timidity is used, but i installed the packages
https://www.joonet.de/sources/timidity/debian_buster/timidity_2.14.0-9~bpo10u1_amd64.deb
https://www.joonet.de/sources/timidity/debian_buster/timidity-daemon_2.14.0-9~bpo10u1_all.deb

This fixed the problem and the sound is working now.

This bug should be moved to timidity, it is not a problem of ALSA.

Best regards
karsten

#901148#173
Date:
2020-12-06 10:25:07 UTC
From:
To:
forcemerge 972689 901148


Hello together,

inspired from this bug: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=935081
i tried the same on the Desktop PC with the problems in this bug:
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=972689

Stopping timidity reactivates the sound in pulseaudio!


But after installing the packages from joachim there where 2 instances of timidity after boot:

timidity   791     1  0 15:45 ?        00:00:00 /usr/bin/timidity -Os -iAD
karsten   2603     1  0 15:48 ?        00:00:00 /usr/bin/timidity -iA -Os

I deactivated the system start of timidity with rcconf and now everything is fine.
This modifications must be part of the distributions.

Best regards
karsten

#901148#178
Date:
2020-12-06 11:50:34 UTC
From:
To:
Hello Karsten,

Karsten wrote on 2020-12-06 11:25:

because of all this trouble with timidity-daemon I have started
build new packages, at first for testing, but then for buster
to fix these bugs. The maintainer will sponsor me. Please wait
a few days.
--- Have a nice day. Joachim (Germany)
#901148#189
Date:
2020-12-07 10:14:07 UTC
From:
To:
I have tested the new packages now:

https://www.joonet.de/sources/timidity/debian_buster/timidity_2.14.0-9~bpo10u1_amd64.deb
https://www.joonet.de/sources/timidity/debian_buster/timidity-daemon_2.14.0-9~bpo10u1_all.deb

All looks fine, the system daemon is deactivated and only the user daemon running.
The sound is working.

Cheers
karsten