I get more and more problems: Error messages in the Pd window, stuck GUI (audio running but with errors), Pd crashes, Pd crashes the computer.

Now it is at a point where it is a real problem. At some stage I slow down working on a patch just because I fear it will break, and live of course it is a nightmare.

My impression is that the gui freezing happens more frequently while using large patches with many graph on parent objects. The error messages always writes out when opening or closing a (sub) window.

I try to stay vanilla but I have some external libraries loaded. I use the pduino lib with arduino unos connected over usb.

My main computer is a MacBookPro early 2011/16 gig ram, hybrid SSD/optical drive, OSX 10.13.6 High Sierra.

But the problems are similar on other macs I use: MacBookAir 2012 with Mojave and a MacBook 2009/8 gig, SSD, with High Sierra).

So, how should I go about to report this bug? So I can help in the best way possible? Should I post the patches where the problems occur in?

@Jona said:

and you need Jack to route ALSA MIDI:

aconnect -l in any terminal will list all available software and hardware midi ports and then you can connect any of them by name or port number aconnect 'Pure Data:4' Blofeld or aconnect 128:4 28:0 will connect pd's midi out to my Blofeld and aconnect -x will disconnect everything or just one conenction if specified. Generally this sort of work is just handled by a script, so for me midiup will check what programs I have open and what hardware connected and figure out how they should be connected . For audio between applications we use the alsa loopback device to create a virtual soundcard to route the audio through using the alsaloop utility, with a script or through alsa configuration files. Alsa can do a great deal more than most think and often can do it better than Jack, Jack is just intuitive, alsa requires you to study up. The main drawback to alsa is that some applications have dropped alsa support, mainly DAWs, which is odd since they generally have no use for Jack since it is rare for a user to route audio between a DAW and another application, it is all internally connected in the DAW to the various plugins, everything is a plugin and Jack is often a redundant requirement that just consumes.

My setup is as simple as possible, midi controller to USB, alsa, pd, no jack. This problem has persisted through multiple pd versions and two different systems, the only commonalities between them are that both systems are source based and use old fashioned SysV. I have spent a fair amount of time in the past in both the alsa and pd IRC channels trouble shooting this and the best guess so far is that under certain circumstances pd does not clean up properly on shutdown and leaves alsa unable to make a proper midi connection into pd, midi out seems unaffected, aconnect -l shows the midi connection into pd hangs at 'connecting.' When this happens midi still works properly in all other applications, it is just pd and I have not been able to recreate the garbled midi in any other application.

Yes, [max], I have been learning [expr] lately and have become somewhat fixated on it, I often find myself using it for things which pd already offers a simple solution for, but I am getting better about that.

Edit; Forgot to mention, you can automate a great deal of the alsa connection, with the use of udev rules you can have the hardware to software connections made automaticaly when a device is plugged in and you can have a script that starts up all your programs and makes the connections between them, so one command or one click and everything is done for you. This works best for those that always use the same setup, but it can be worked to adapt to changing setups as well.

UPDATING...

Changing the JackRouter.ini file, as suggested by @ whale-av, worked! But in parts ...
1º - I'm testing Jack on two Windows machines. A descktop and a notebook. Same version of PD and system.

2º - On both machines the JackRouter.ini file contained 4 channels as standard.

3º - On the notebook, when I started the PD, I got 4 channels on Jack. In the descktop the result is the print attached above.

4º - After changing the JackRouter.ini file on the notebook, I got the expected result. But ...

5º - In the descktop I still got two PD channels in Jack.

6º - I installed PD 0.48 on the descktop and Jack introduced me to the channels corresponding to those edited in the JackRouter.ini file.

7º - I tried the versions 0.49 and 0.50 of the PD in the descktop and I am still presented with only two channels in Jack, even reinstalling Jack and changing JackRouter.ini.

8º - In Cubase LE I also have the same problem ...

ps: sorry, english is not my native language

Have you given Pd root priority (chmod 4755)?

why should I do that? this would make pd run as root always right?
pd already runs with realtime priority, as far as I can see:

$ pd -rt &
Jack: JackClient::SetupDriverSync driver sem in flush mode
Jack: JackLinuxFutex::Connect name = jack_sem.1000_default_pure_data
Jack: Clock source : system clock via clock_gettime
Jack: JackLibClient::Open name = pure_data refnum = 4
Jack: JackClient::PortRegister ref = 4 name = pure_data:input0 type = 32 bit float mono audio port_index = 7
Jack: JackClient::PortRegister ref = 4 name = pure_data:input1 type = 32 bit float mono audio port_index = 8
Jack: JackClient::PortRegister ref = 4 name = pure_data:output0 type = 32 bit float mono audio port_index = 9
Jack: JackClient::PortRegister ref = 4 name = pure_data:output1 type = 32 bit float mono audio port_index = 10
Jack: JackClient::Activate
Jack: JackPosixThread::StartImp : create non RT thread
Jack: JackPosixThread::ThreadHandler : start
Jack: JackClient::kBufferSizeCallback buffer_size = 256
Jack: JackClient::Init : period = 5804 computation = 100 constraint = 5804
Jack: JackPosixThread::AcquireRealTimeImp priority = 5
Jack: JackClient::ClientNotify ref = 4 name = pure_data notify = 2
Jack: JackClient::kActivateClient name = pure_data ref = 4 
Jack: JackClient::Connect src = system:capture_1 dst = pure_data:input0
Jack: JackClient::ClientNotify ref = 4 name = pure_data notify = 18
Jack: JackClient::ClientNotify ref = 4 name = pure_data notify = 18
Jack: JackClient::Connect src = system:capture_2 dst = pure_data:input1
Jack: JackClient::Connect src = pure_data:output0 dst = system:playback_1
Jack: JackClient::Connect src = pure_data:output1 dst = system:playback_2
Jack: JackClient::ClientNotify ref = 4 name = pure_data notify = 18
Jack: JackClient::ClientNotify ref = 4 name = pure_data notify = 18

$ ps al | grep pd
F   UID   PID  PPID PRI  NI    VSZ   RSS WCHAN  STAT TTY        TIME COMMAND
0  1000  1212   746  -7   - 259980 183892 -     SLl  pts/0      0:19 pd -rt
0  1000  1214  1212  20   0  58984 24812 -      Sl   pts/0      0:02 wish /usr/lib/pd/tcl//pd-gui.tcl 5401
0  1000  1216  1212  -9   -   2308   796 -      S    pts/0      0:00 /usr/lib/pd/bin/pd-watchdog
0  1000  1311   746  20   0  15064  3088 -      R+   pts/0      0:00 ps al
...

Linux and audio can get relatively hairy,.. basically if you try to use ALSA directly with Pd, you can't use anything else that has sound. That's where intermediary layers like PulseAudio and JACK come into play that talk to ALSA, PulseAudio is good for general use, JACK is good for lower-latency stuff like you would want with Pd so use JACK with Pd and then you want to download "sinks" where everything else can use PulseAudio and then be connected to JACK, I have this info saved somewhere...

Edit: Well essentially you want to sudo apt install both qjackctl (which I think installs jack also?) and pulseaudio-module-jack. Then in qjackctl: under setup > options: "pulseaudio -k" on startup, "pacmd load-module module-jack-source channels=2; pacmd load-module module-jack-sink channels=2;" after startup, then "pulseaudio -k" after shutdown. Basically, kill the pulseaudio process when you startup and after you shutdown the JACK server. You might have to tinker with /etc/pulse/default.pa,.. can't remember if I did on my current installation but we'll get to that if need be...

Okay ;that's what I suspected you were doing. It is possible to use the MTP serial directly with linux and the mtpav driver, though this requires a machine with true hardware parallel port access (USB adapters won't cut it) and is limited to MIDI output only as the driver is a hack that was never finished. I used to run mine that way with a second USB MIDI interface connected to one or more of the MTP's unused routed MIDI outputs (there is, BTW still no way to connect the MTP USB version directly to a Linux system as it doesn't use a standard USB MIDI driver)

As far as the kernel is concerned, I've only ever used lowlatency or RT kernels for MIDI stuff. I don't know how a generic kernel would affect this problem but it's probably best avoided as they are not specifically built for multimedia.

Now read closely as this is where it becomes stupidly complicated.

First, make sure that the problem is internal to Pd. Your interfaces are probably not the issue (since Pd is only seeing the UM-1 driver I don't think the MTP even figures in here). However, the chosen MIDI API can get in the way, specifically in the case of the unfinished JACK MIDI. JACK MIDI presently can only pass SYSEX as short realtime messages. SYSEX data dumps will disappear if sent into the current JACK MIDI system. ALSA works OK. OSS probably too, but I have not tried it.

If that stuff is ruled out and you are still getting problems, it probably has to do with a set of longstanding bugs/oversights in the Pd MIDI stack that can affect the input, output, or both.

On the output side there is a sysex transmission bug which affects all versions of Pd Vanilla before 0.48. The patch that fixed Vanilla had already been applied to L20rk/PurrData for some time (years, I think). The output bug did not completely disable SYSEX output. What it did was to miss-format SYSEX in a way that can't be understood by most modern midi applications, including the standard USB MIDI driver software (SYSEX output from Pd is ignored and the driver/interface will not transmit anything). You would not notice this bug with a computer connected directly to an MTP because the MAC and Linux MTP drivers are programmed to pass raw unformatted MIDI.

If this is the problem and you have to use a pre-0.48 version of Vanilla it can be patched. See:

https://sourceforge.net/p/pure-data/bugs/1272/

On the MIDI input side of Pd we have 2 common problems. One is the (annoyingly unfinished but nevertheless implemented) input to output timestamping buffer that's supposed to provide sample-accurate MIDI at the output (if it was finished). This can be minimized with the proper startup flags (for a MIDI-only instance of Pd, -rt -noaudio -audiobuf 1 -sleepgrain 0.5 works for me) or completely defeated with a source code tweak to the s_midi.c file. This may not be the source of your particular problem as it usually only affects the time it takes to pass messages from input to output, but is worth mentioning as it can be very annoying regardless.

With SYSEX dumps it is more likely that the problem lies with the MIDI queue size. This is very common and I experienced it myself when trying to dump memory from a Korg Electribe Ea-1.. The current version of Pd limits the queue to a size of 512 (even worse it used to be 20) and any input larger than that will get truncated w/no error warning. There is not yet any way to change this with startup flags or user settings. This can only be "fixed" by a different tweak to s_midi.c and recompiling the app.

The attached text files are derived from the Pd-list and will show the specific mods that need to be made to s_midi.c.

pd_midi_io_timing_buffer_mod

pd_midi_input_quere_mod

Hey,

Since today I have strange crashes on Windows 7 64bit.

Either pd.exe or pd.com crashes when executed.

I had Pd-extended 0.43.4 installed and it worked for days without problem. Today I've tried to load a .pd which I worked on at another computer (same version): pd.com crashed. I've tried to start Pd normal: pd.exe crashed.

I tried an uninstall and re-install, it's installing without problems, but doesn't create shortcuts.

I've tried running it as administrator, rebooted computer.

What's wrong here?!

"Problem details" by Windows:

Problem signature:
Problem Event Name: APPCRASH
Application Name: pd.exe
Application Version: 0.43.0.0
Application Timestamp: 5100f299
Fault Module Name: pd.dll
Fault Module Version: 0.0.0.0
Fault Module Timestamp: 5100f298
Exception Code: c0000005
Exception Offset: 0005300a
OS Version: 6.1.7601.2.1.0.256.1
Locale ID: 1031
Additional Information 1: 0a9e
Additional Information 2: 0a9e372d3b4ad19135b953a78882e789
Additional Information 3: 0a9e
Additional Information 4: 0a9e372d3b4ad19135b953a78882e789

THE GOAL:

I want my Raspberry Pi 2 to automatically start up the Jack server with realtime scheduling, and subsequently start Pure Data with realtime scheduling, load a patch &c. without any user intervention from a login shell.

As a performance artist working primarily with psychodrama (the technology is definitely NOT the important part here), fiddling around at a terminal right before or during a performance is kind of... psychically inconvenient. I need a box that I can plug in, give the audio output to the sound guy, and be ready to go.

PREREQUISITES:

I use Raspbian with a Linux kernel compiled with realtime goodness. I have hand-compiled Jack2 and Pure Data with realtime support in order to take advantage of this. Running a process with realtime priority requires the proper PAM directives set in /etc/security/limits.conf and related places, but that is beyond the scope of this little write-up.

Also somewhat relevant: I use a M-Audio MobilePre USB soundcard (sounds pretty awful by today's standards, but it's an extremely USEFUL box and sounds good enough for the work I do). For full-duplex sound, this requires the RasPi's USB to be set to single speed. In this configuration, I can get just under 2.9ms latency with good CPU overhead for Pure Data to run a few of my 64-voice wavetable and delay line granulators. Yeah!

THE PROBLEM:

Purely by happenstance, I had given the jackd command in my startup script the option “-s” which allows the server to ignore overruns and so on. So things seemed to be working as expected, but I noticed a lot more glitches than when I manually started up Jack and Pd from the terminal without the “-s” option. Upon removing it from my startup script, everything failed! WAH.

So I started piping STDERR and STDOUT to text files so I could read what either Jack or Pd were complaining about. As it turns out, Jack was unable to start with realtime priority due to a permissions problem. (I assume this is one of the things the “-s” options allows jackd to ignore, and thus start up with non-realtime priority. Problem is that Pure Data can’t connect to a non-realtime Jack server when its “-rt” option specified.)

Now, I had already been through the whole rigamarole of setting proper memory and priority limits for the “audio” group, to which the user “pi” belongs. So I thought, okay, I have to execute these commands as “pi”, and while simulating a login shell because the security limits in question are only set during login.

So I did this:

su -l pi -c "/usr/local/bin/jackd -R -dalsa -dhw:1,0 -p128 -n3 -r44100 -S >> /home/pi/jackd.log 2>&1 &"

This says “login as user ‘pi’ and then run the jackd command with these options, piping the outputs to this log file and run it in the background”. Well, I still got all the same errors about not being able to set realtime priority. WHYYYYYYYYY?

THE SOLUTION:

I hunted and hunted and hunted on a Very Popular Search Engine til I decided to try searching “security limits not loaded with su -l” and found this.

(Makes me think of that Talking Heads lyric, “Isn’t it weird / Looks too obscure to me”.)

So by uncommenting the line # session required pam_limits.so in /etc/pam.d/su everything started working as expected.

CONCLUSION:

I now know a LOT MORE about PAM and how important it is to keep in mind when and in what order scripts and other little subsystems are executed; but also that sometimes the problem is EXTREMELY OBSCURE and is to be found in some seemingly far-flung config file.

I hope this helps anybody out there working with Pure Data and the RasPi. The second generation board really packs quite a punch and can run several hundred audio grains (run by vline~ and enveloped by vline~ and cos~) simultaneously without a problem. And I'm pretty sure this is just using ONE of the 4 cores!

I'm by no means an expert Linux sysadmin, so if you have any other suggestions or corrections, please let me know! I wouldn't have been able to get this far without all the generous and helpful writeups everybody else has contributed, both within the RasPi and Pure Data communities. If you have any questions about anything I glossed over here, I'll do my best to answer them.

hey,

I don't know but I wonder if maybe there isn't a more general problem going on right now (though it seems simple and wierd so I dont get it)
I am also having trouble loading abstractions even though I have done it quite a lot before, in particular (I posted this problem a few days ago but am posting in response to your problem in hopes that it might be a more global problem - though my abstractions, other than the ones mentioned below, load so I dont understand)

specifically, was the problem with the path not being recognised?

anyway -
Hello everyone,

This is a strange problem because I have loaded libraries and things with the 'Paths' dialog under the file menu before and had no problems.

I am trying to get Chris McCormick's s-abstractions to load. The folder is in the same folder as my other libraries and it is listed in both the "paths" and "startup" areas. It wasn't before but I added it.

I am running windows 7 64 bit. Another oddity that I noticed is that in my Program Files (x86) which is where the 64 bit programs live, I have pd installed and the folder is simply called pd. However in the Program Files folder (missing the x86, where the non-64 bit programs live) I have a folder called "Pd-0.42.5-extended"

I wonder if that couldn't be the problem. The s-abstractions folder is included in both though...

Hopefully somebody has some idea about this...

((anyway sorry to post twice but I hoped maybe there was some common problem there))

I did.

For command jackd I get this terminal output:

matjaz@matjaz-NV59C:~$ jackd
jackdmp 1.9.6
Copyright 2001-2005 Paul Davis and others.
Copyright 2004-2010 Grame.
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
Cannot create thread 1 Operation not permitted
Cannot create thread 1 Operation not permitted

usage: jackdmp [ --no-realtime OR -r ]
[ --realtime OR -R [ --realtime-priority OR -P priority ] ]
(the two previous arguments are mutually exclusive. The default is --realtime)
[ --name OR -n server-name ]
[ --timeout OR -t client-timeout-in-msecs ]
[ --loopback OR -L loopback-port-number ]
[ --port-max OR -p maximum-number-of-ports]
[ --midi OR -X midi-driver ]
[ --verbose OR -v ]
[ --clocksource OR -c [ c(ycle) | h(pet) | s(ystem) ]
[ --replace-registry ]
[ --silent OR -s ]
[ --sync OR -S ]
[ --temporary OR -T ]
[ --version OR -V ]
-d backend [ ... backend args ... ]
Available backends may include: alsa, dummy, freebob, firewire or net

jackdmp -d backend --help
to display options for each backend

and for qjackctl:
The same control GUI opened where I clicked start.

15:38:11.262 Patchbay deactivated.
15:38:11.263 Statistics reset.
Cannot connect to server socket err = No such file or directory
Cannot connect to server socket
jack server is not running or cannot be started
15:38:11.286 ALSA connection graph change.
15:38:11.482 ALSA connection change.
15:38:19.241 Startup script...
15:38:19.242 artsshell -q terminate
Cannot connect to server socket err = No such file or directory
Cannot connect to server socket
jack server is not running or cannot be started
sh: artsshell: not found
15:38:19.646 Startup script terminated with exit status=32512.
15:38:19.646 JACK is starting...
15:38:19.646 /usr/bin/jackd -dalsa -d/dev/dsp -r44100 -p256 -n2 -Xseq
15:38:19.649 JACK was started with PID=2544.
Cannot create thread 1 Operation not permitted
Cannot create thread 1 Operation not permitted
jackdmp 1.9.6
Copyright 2001-2005 Paul Davis and others.
Copyright 2004-2010 Grame.
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
JACK server starting in realtime mode with priority 10
Cannot lock down memory area (Cannot allocate memory)
ALSA lib control.c:882:(snd_ctl_open_noupdate) Invalid CTL /dev/dsp
control open "/dev/dsp" (No such file or directory)
ALSA lib control.c:882:(snd_ctl_open_noupdate) Invalid CTL /dev/dsp
control open "/dev/dsp" (No such file or directory)
audio_reservation_init
Acquire audio card Audio-1
creating alsa driver ... /dev/dsp|/dev/dsp|256|2|44100|0|0|nomon|swmeter|-|32bit
ALSA lib control.c:882:(snd_ctl_open_noupdate) Invalid CTL /dev/dsp
control open "/dev/dsp" (No such file or directory)
Cannot initialize driver
JackServer::Open() failed with -1
Failed to start server
15:38:19.743 JACK was stopped with exit status=255.
15:38:19.745 Post-shutdown script...
15:38:19.746 killall jackd
jackd: no process found
15:38:20.153 Post-shutdown script terminated with exit status=256.
15:38:21.703 Could not connect to JACK server as client. - Overall operation failed. - Unable to connect to server. Please check the messages window for more info.
Cannot connect to server socket err = No such file or directory
Cannot connect to server socket
jack server is not running or cannot be started
15:38:31.152 Could not connect to JACK server as client. - Overall operation failed. - Unable to connect to server. Please check the messages window for more info.
Cannot connect to server socket err = No such file or directory
Cannot connect to server socket
jack server is not running or cannot be started
15:38:42.143 Could not connect to JACK server as client. - Overall operation failed. - Unable to connect to server. Please check the messages window for more info.
Cannot connect to server socket err = No such file or directory
Cannot connect to server socket
jack server is not running or cannot be started
15:39:02.300 Could not connect to JACK server as client. - Overall operation failed. - Unable to connect to server. Please check the messages window for more info.
Cannot connect to server socket err = No such file or directory
Cannot connect to server socket
jack server is not running or cannot be started

I'm lost.