[ph_ost]

Hi,
i recently upgraded my HTPC (Ubuntu Server 16.04. LTS, Kodi 16.1), which is connected to a Denon AVR-1900 via HDMI.

Situation is as the following:
Whenever I watch a movie or Live-TV it at first works fine. Then at some point (it seems to happen completely random) the audio cuts off, but video continues.
To get audio working again I can either stop the movie and continue or switch the audio stream. Normal music playback works fine (longest I had was about 6 hours straight, no problems)
But it can also happen that kodi completely freezes my machine, which means I can't even connect via SSH anymore to kill kodi.
I then tried to connect my HTPC just with HDMI for video and a normal cinch-cable for audio. This seemed to work fine, but after a while kodi froze again completely (don't have a log of that yet, but could try to provide one), so I had to reset the machine.

I tried to log such an occurence where kodi didn't freeze, just cut off audio: http://pastebin.com/6wrjwCSX
The audio stopped working at about 15:48. Since I'm not registered at pastebin yet i cut out many lines in the middle of the log, but those were just repeating (was watching tv over iptv).

My Receiver supports all the audio formats you could passthrough, which is why I enabled passthrough and enabled those audio formats.

I'd be happy if anyone could me help out!

Greets

[tekno]

You have the same as I had in my logs.

17:04:33 T:139770173859584 ERROR: PulseAudio: Failed to connect context
17:04:33 T:139770173859584 NOTICE: PulseAudio might not be running. Context was not created.

I even switched to ALSA and still same problem

I am running an early x86 (NOT 64) kodibuntu that was updated to the latest kodi . I am not able to select pulseaudio for reinstallation as it appears in synaptic but apparently has no source available. Installef ALSA and seems I have the same problem

This definately started after upgrade to 16.0

As My kodi box also serves as an asterisk gateway I am not inclined to reformat it but that may be proving necessary.

I suspect it must have issues with dependencies for 16.0

[fritsch]

17:04:33 T:139770173859584 ERROR: PulseAudio: Failed to connect context
17:04:33 T:139770173859584 NOTICE: PulseAudio might not be running. Context was not created.

Can be ignored. kodi is built with PA support, but falls back to ALSA when pulseaudio daemon not running. This is normal.

You can rebuild kodi with --disable-pulse and that error warning will be gone. I will change it to a Warning if I remember tonight.

[fritsch]

To the op:

15:33:31 T:139770743818560 NOTICE: Host CPU: Intel® Celeron® CPU J1900 @ 1.99GHz, 4 cores available

is your problem, sadly, see: https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=109051 it's a 2 year old kernel bug. You can use the intel_idle.max_cstate=1 workaround via /etc/default/grub to workaround this kernel bug.

[ph_ost]

So I just added intel_idle.max_cstate=1 as a new line to /etc/default/grub right?
Will do some testing now to see if that solved the problem.
But what is the technical explanation here? I'm just curious..

/edit: I just listened to some music, but it still stops working. When I pause and play again it does work again though.
/edit2: conducted some more research on my own and found out how to correctly add that parameter to /etc/default/grub, will report back after some more testing

[fritsch]

You ran: sudo update-grub after you made the change?

post dmesg | pastebinit after a boot and as always the kodi log - I hate speculating without proper logfiles ...

[ph_ost]

sorry for that, see my updated/edited post. Was busy messing around while you replied.
If the problem should occur again I will provide all info I can get again.

But here's my dmesg | pastebinit: http://paste.ubuntu.com/16343018/

[ph_ost]

So after some more testing I could (or at least I hope I could) log two different occurences: http://pastebin.com/m5uvCPPu

Around 17:54:20 the audio stopped for a few seconds but then came back by itself.
Around 18:04:46 the audio stopped and I had to pause and restart playback to get it back.

But (and that's some good news) kodi didn't crash since I updated my grub.

As far as I can tell it seems that kodi has some problems to stay connected to the hdmi device?
Might that be because of some driver issues? And if so, how can I fix that (never installed any drivers under linux)?

[fritsch]

Your TV turns off and the HDMI audio device is unregistered

17:54:19 T:140586422442304 INFO: DPMS: enabled power-saving mode SUSPEND

You either need to make sure the TV never turns off or hardcode its EDID. Kodi cannot play audio when kernel removes the hdmi audio out. Issue is in the lower layers. Pin 19 would also be a solution.

[ph_ost]

My machine is connected to an AVR (Denon AVR-1900) instead of a TV. And the AVR definitely stays on all the time and it doesn't switch sources or stuff like that.
Would a possible workaround be to connect kodi via cinch for audio instead of hdmi? I'll try that..

What do you mean by Pin 20?? Hope that doesn't involve any soldering..

[fritsch]

That's not the problem. TV is signalling that it is off now - that is forwarded to the system and it turns off the head, including HDMI. See the log, it is 100% clear about that.

You can tape Pin 19 on the cable as a last resort: http://s4.postimg.org/gmog0m7kf/HDMI_Blocked_Pin_19.jpg

[ph_ost]

Okay so I disabled HDMI Control on my AVR for the HTPC-source. Now it works like a charm!
Maybe when I want to use remote functionality I have to tape the Pin, but now I'm just happy that it works.

Thanks a lot!

[tekno]

I have this problem whether I use HDMI, analog or an optical USB card . No difference.

[Lexridge]

I have also been having a similar problem under Fedora 23, since Kodi 16.x. It never loses audio while I'm viewing with kodi. It always happens after it sits idle for a while. It plays the video fine. It does not lock up the computer at all However, when I try to exit Kodi, it takes an extraordinary length of time or sometimes doesn't ever exit until I kill the process kodi.bin. Then when I restart, audio is fine again, until a 10-20 minutes idle period, then it drops the audio again. It still occupies a channel in PulseAudio, but the PA VU meters are null at this point. So Kodi is not sending to PulseAudio, except it still registers its presence with PA, or so it would seem.

[redstorm]

I wonder if I too have been re effected by this bug as i remember compiling a special HDMI kernel around the time of 3.13.xx

Since i updated from 14.04 to 16.04 with Kodi 16.1 roughly every 3 days audio stops working and a reboot is required to get it back.
I have drm_kms_helper configured to allow booting without the AVR and TV switched on.

Code:

video=HDMI-A-3:1920x1080@50D drm_kms_helper.edid_firmware=HDMI-A-3:edid/edid.bin

Host CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-4570S CPU @ 2.90GHz, 4 cores available

dmesg

kodi.log