Banshee/Rhythmbox regularly stop playing audio when left on in the background ["Failed to push data into queue"]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

I am experiencing the same issue on a machine I updated to 12.04 beta 2 using the alternate CD. It occurs both with Banshee and with Rhytmbox, and using flacs exclusively, not oggs or mp3s as in another bug report.

I'm wondering if this could be an issue due to upgrading instead of doing a clean install. Matthew, are your two machines running clean installs of 12.04 or were they upgraded? I'm toying with the idea of trying a purge of pulseaudio and reinstall or maybe a clean install of 12.04 to see if that makes a difference, but the latter would be a pretty big ordeal with all my files.

The issue occurs for OGG files for me as well; as I do not use FLAC audio.

I believe that they were both upgraded (although I also recall doing an install of 12.04 alpha and still having the problem). I've yet to try a full reinstall.

I think igot the same problem with amarok (KDE) on a fresh installed 12.04 (64Bit).
Somethimes musik stops/pauses playing at the beginning of a new song.

in syslog i find:
pulseaudio[1900]: [alsa-sink] ratelimit.c: 56 events suppressed
pulseaudio[1900]: [alsa-sink] protocol-native.c: Failed to push data into queue

changing option for snd-hda-intel: for example option snd-hda-intel enable_msi=1 doesn't change anything.

sound in 11.04 was ok.

i posted this "bug" in:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/pulseaudio/+bug/982385

Sounds like the same thing. In my syslog I also see the following when playback in Rhythmbox stops:

pulseaudio[1889]: [alsa-sink] protocol-native.c: Failed to push data into queue

It's good to know it happens with a clean install as well.

I haven't found a solution for this yet with Rhythmbox/Banshee, but thanks to the recommendation of a user on the Ubuntu Forums I found that Clementine is a substitute for Rhythmbox/Banshee that is not affected by this. I installed Clementine and it works great without any playback problems.

Same here, very annoying. Can't listen more then 5 songs in a row without restarting the playback.

pulseaudio[2177]: [alsa-sink] ratelimit.c: 15 events suppressed
pulseaudio[2177]: [alsa-sink] protocol-native.c: Failed to push data into queue

I can confirm this bug. I use banshee, did a clean install of 12.04, and I get the same issue with music stopping playing at random times. All of my music consists of ogg and mp3. Like the others, I did *not* have this issue in 11.10.

Example of error message in /var/log/syslog:

pulseaudio[2001]: [alsa-sink] protocol-native.c: Failed to push data into queue

Is this related to bug 981629?

It sounds very similar to what I'm experiencing, and bug 956830, which it is marked as a duplicate of, has been confirmed and assigned, so it looks like a fix is coming.

I can confirm this too on a clean install of 12.04 64-bit. My music collection is a mix of ogg (about 40%) and mp3 (the rest) and I see this message in syslog at the time the music stops:
May 12 11:52:07 triton pulseaudio[3004]: [alsa-sink] protocol-native.c: Failed to push data into queue

And I'm using banshee and not rhythmbox so I doubt this issue is related to some bug in the player itself.

I just could reproduce the mistake in bug 956830:

The following transitions cause a pause:
  mp3->ogg

These do not:
  ogg->mp3

So I think we should mark this bug report as a duplicate of bug 956830 (see linux4me)

and hope that

"help is coming" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9QBlgRAk-0)

:-)

My music collection is made up of ogg files EXCLUSIVELY and I can confirm the bug.

My music is all flac files, so it happens flac -> flac as well.

Do you use gapeless playing? does it happen without it?

When I use "crossfading" with 1 second, than I have no problems.

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

Crossfading of 1 second does NOT fix the MP3-to-OGG transition in Rhythmbox 2.96 on my machine.

Have you restarted Rhythmbox? After selecting "crossfading" I had to restart Rhythmbox to take effect.

Radiostreams are also effected. So ...

@stefan--yes, sorry. After restarting Rhythmbox, the 1 second crossfade works around the problem. A 0.2 second crossfade also works. Ignore comment #19.

I can confirm that disabling gapless playback in Banshee settings (untick Edit->Preferences->Enable gapless playback) also works around the problem. The problem only happens when gapless playback is enabled.

I've found that using the cursor keys on the track progress slider (or dragging the slider a little) often starts the track playing again, but then audio often (but not every time) drops out at about 11 seconds in. It can be restored by moving the slider back a little again. Normally the rest of the track is then fine. I have crossfade disabled.

In response to #24. I can trigger this behaviour by selecting a playlist and select random play. More often than not Rhythmbox 2.97 stops playing the next song. Moving the slider just a little bit starts playing again. I have crossfase disabled.

I experience exactly the same behaviour as described in #24.
In addition, clicking on the 'next' button, always plays the next song; Whether you go from mp3 to ogg or flac or vice versa, it never displays the beheviour described in this bug, where it stops playing the next song.

My system is also affected by this bug. On music playback, the sound stops after a song and then starts again randomly. However, I have a strong suspition this might be related to acpi. When I am translating a video, turning playback on and off very frequently, I hear a silent click in my headphones 5 or 6 seconds after the playback stops. I believe this is pulseaudio powering down audio card to avoid amplifying white noise. Now I am looking for some way to make pulseaudio not to do it.

There seem to possibly be several different issues going on here, but I'll tell you how I worked around one of them. My symptoms were: Banshee is playing music, monitor goes off due to machine idle, Banshee continues playing until end of track and then stops. When I move the mouse to get the monitor back on, Banshee starts playing where it left off (i.e. it begins the next track).

I worked around this issue by disabling Banshee's "Notification Area Icon" extension. This means I no longer get notification popups when the track changes, but it allows Banshee to keep playing in the background after the computer goes idle and the monitor goes off. Is it possible that Banshee is blocked from starting playback, waiting to post a notification that can't be posted when the computer is idle?

By the way, I'm using Banshee 2.4.0 under the Cinnamon desktop on Linux Mint Maya (based off of Ubuntu 12.04).

Hi everybody,

Sorry I haven't been able to seen or get to this bug until now. I've tried to reproduce it here, but so far I've failed. Therefore, I have instead built a custom pulseaudio package into my ppa:diwic/temp which adds some debugging info.

So can at least one or two of you do the following:
1) Wait until pulseaudio version 1:1.1-0ubuntu15.2~diwicppa3 has finished building in https://launchpad.net/~diwic
/+archive/temp
2) add ppa:diwic/temp to your software sources and update/upgrade pulseaudio
3) Do a debug log of PulseAudio, see ( https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PulseAudio/Log )
Ensure that the problem is triggered (which seems to be consistent with the error message "Failed to push data into queue" ) while the log is running.

Thanks!

I had the problem when using Banshee and the workaround I posted 3 months ago was to disable 'Gapless Playback' in Banshee settings. I've just re-enabled that feature and retested and songs have played now for around 40 mins without interruption.

So in other words I can't reproduce the bug now, I guess one of the updates in the meantime has fixed it (for Banshee at least, I can't say anything about people using other players).

This seems to be fixed in Rhythmbox too. I had enabled crossfade as a work-around, but just now I disabled crossfade, closed, re-opened Rhythmbox, and tested. The formerly-broken MP3-to-OGG transition works well, as well as all the other combinations of OGG, MP3, and WMA tried. :-)

This is not fixed in rhythmbox, at least not the version in the standard repositories. The effect is still observable on transitions between different format tracks. For example, FLAC->MP3 still freezes playback.

Alistair, perhaps you are experiencing a different bug or perhaps you have a different version of Rhythmbox or a library. I don't have any FLAC files to test. My experience with this bug in the past is that it froze/paused on transitions _from_ MP3 and _not_to_ MP3.

I'm running Rhythmbox version 2.96-0ubuntu4.1, libgstreamer0.10-0 version 0.10.36-1ubuntu1, and libtotem-plparser17 version 3.4.1-1.

I still experience this bug on transitions to FLAC from either mp3 or ogg.
The transition from mp3 to ogg doesn't give me any problems anymore.
This was fixed since this commit arrived in the audio stack:

https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/precise-changes/2012-July/016564.html

gst-plugins-base0.10 (0.10.36-1ubuntu0.1) precise-proposed; urgency=low

  * debian/patches/git_timestamps_discard_issue.patch:
    - "don't discard timestamps when consecutive input buffers have
       the same ts", should fix playback pausing on mp3 to ogg
       transitions in rhythmbox (lp: #921071)

Ok, lowering priority as it seems to be fixed for most people. If somebody still manages to get "Failed to push data into queue" after having followed the instructions in comment #29, let me know.

I still have the problem. Please find in attachment the "pulseverbose.log" file made as requested in comment #29.

Here is the story:
- start pulsaudio
- start rhythmbox (set to play all my playlist on loop in random order)
- push PLAY button on rhythmbox and it works fine for several songs, and then...
- rhythmbox freezes at the begining of a new song (Yeah! that's the bug). I waited several seconds (maybe 30 seconds)
- i clic at the begin of the "time slider" to jump to "time 0" of the song, and rhythmbox starts to play this new song
- just after i quit pulseaudio.

Hope this helps...

I have been experiencing this bug for the past week and I've not had any luck getting around it while using Rhythmbox or Banshee. It usually happens after about three songs and picks back up about 5+ minutes later. I've attached the pulseaudio log of when the music pauses (around 600.738).

From James log (arnauds log does not show the error) :

( 600.740| 0.002) W: [alsa-sink] memblockq.c: Can_push: l = -2134034528, end = 12529, bq->read_index = 0, bq->write_index = 140542054157432, bq->maxlength = 140542062687863

All right, so bq->maxlength and bq->write_index are way too high and l should never be less than zero. This could be a random memory overwrite but it also looks a bit suspicious that write_index and maxlength are about the same.

James, are you familiar with gdb? Or should I add more debug prints and ask for new logs from you? Assuming we both have the time to try to nail this bug down.

I really don't know much about what's going on behind the scenes, but I'd be happy to produce/provide more logs with instruction.

I had the same problem with Banshee 2.4.0 on Mint 13. Disabling gapless playback seems to be an effective workaround.

Some more information about my experience:

the bug seems to be systematic for the transition "end of OGG file" -> "begin of FLAC file". My playlist contains a lot of OGG and FLAC, and i play all of them randomly. Each time the music "pause", it's at a begin of a "FLAC" file, and the previous file played was a OGG file. Enabling/disabling gapless playback doesn't solve the problem for me.

Then, i upgraded my PC : new motherboard (gigabyte->asus), new processor (amd->intel)... and new OS (ubuntu 32 bits -> ubuntu 64 bits) installed from scratch... and the problem is still there :(

The only common point between my old and my new config is my audio adapter which is an USB audio adapter (DAC connected on a USB2 port).

Maybe this bug only happens with USB audio adapter ?

[Expired for pulseaudio (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]

[Expired for pulseaudio (Ubuntu Precise) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]

I have also been experiencing this bug since I moved to Linux Mint 13 Maya with Cinnamon desktop, based on 12.04, about June 2012. As with the others, just touching the progress slider button in the player, Rhythmbox or Banshee, will start the music again. Strangely, it always stops with certain artists music (e.g. Bob Dylan) and never with others. Mainly MP3 format, but a few flac and ogg.
I'm about to try out Clementine, to see if this works around it.

Since moving to LMDE in September 2012 I have also been experiencing this bug: Rhythmbox is freezing playback when trying to start a new song. Two or three attempts of debugging just led me to flawless playback - seems like the bug just slips through fingers.

I can confirm this bug for Ubuntu 12.04, 12.10 and 13.04 as well as Archlinux for OGG MP3 M4A and FLAC. Seems to be an upstream bug in some library.

I'm having the same problem on 13.04. When playing through a list, the player pauses as it begins playing the next track in the playlist. I hope this problem hasn't been abandoned because it's not fixed. It it's really closed, please reopen.

I am having the same problem it seems as everyone else. I have a fresh install of 13.04 and I am using mp3 music files. After a little while listening to music, the music just stops playing. Usually this is right at the beginning of the track (within the first 5 sec or less, typically much less). But I've had the music stop playing in the middle of the track too. I spotted the comment here about using cross fading. I'm going to try that as a temp work around.

Same here on ArchLinux + KDE + Amarok...

I just upgraded to 13.10 and I am having the same problem. It is exactly what comment #48 describes. It also happens if I play a playlist using Totem. It seems to happen always to some specific songs, in a consistent way (e.g. i'm unable to play more than 5 seconds of "Led Zeppelin - Immigrant song").

Crossfade doesn't solve the issue for me.

Still facing issue in Ubuntu 13.10; RB 2.99.1

Crossfade seems to solve the issue. If you don't want to use crossfade (due to how toggle pause/play behaves, or for other reasons), you can try the following workaround. It works for me.

1. Extract `rhythmboxfix.plugin` and `rhythmboxfix.py` from the attached archive into `~/.local/share/rhythmbox/plugins/`.
2. Restart RhythmBox and enable the `RhythmBox Fix` plugin.

The attachment "An RB plugin" seems to be a patch. If it isn't, please remove the "patch" flag from the attachment, remove the "patch" tag, and if you are a member of the ~ubuntu-reviewers, unsubscribe the team.

[This is an automated message performed by a Launchpad user owned by ~brian-murray, for any issues please contact him.]

Confirming that this problem exists on Mint Petra, Banshee 2.6.1-3, pulseaudio 1:4.0-0ubuntu6.

Same behavior - banshee will move to a new track, play a fraction of a second, then stop. Play/pause button is ineffectual. Grabbing the time slider and jiggling it starts playback.

Turning off gapless playback has so far worked.

Rhythmbox 3.0.2 on Ubuntu 14.04 stop playing after first second of the new track.

I confirm the bug on Ubuntu Gnome 14.04. Rythmbox stops after the first second of the song. I have the following lines in the syslog:

xxx pulseaudio[1792]: [alsa-sink-92HD90BXX Analog] ratelimit.c: 88 events suppressed
xxx pulseaudio[1792]: [alsa-sink-92HD90BXX Analog] protocol-native.c: Failed to push data into queue

Hi,
I confirm the bug under Mint Qiana, Banshee 2.6.2, playing CDs.
Disabling gapless playback seems to solve it.
I noticed the following in syslog:

Sep 2 09:19:56 bureau pulseaudio[1756]: [alsa-sink-ALC889 Analog] ratelimit.c: 1859 events suppressed
Sep 2 09:19:56 bureau pulseaudio[1756]: [alsa-sink-ALC889 Analog] protocol-native.c: Failed to push data into queue
Sep 2 09:19:56 bureau pulseaudio[1756]: message repeated 10 times: [ [alsa-sink-ALC889 Analog] protocol-native.c: Failed to push data into queue]
Sep 2 09:22:54 bureau pulseaudio[1756]: [alsa-sink-ALC889 Analog] ratelimit.c: 100 events suppressed
Sep 2 09:22:54 bureau pulseaudio[1756]: [alsa-sink-ALC889 Analog] protocol-native.c: Failed to push data into queue

I can confirm this bug under Ubuntu 14.10 64-bit (Unity), Rhythumbox 3.0.3 .

Syslog shows just the one relevant entry that matches up with the time of occurrence.

Nov 13 11:11:58 aubnerap06183l pulseaudio[2434]: [alsa-sink-92HD81B1X5 Analog] protocol-native.c: Failed to push data into queue

Pattern is always the same. Rhythmbox minimised playing a longish playlist. Get a few tracks in, and it will play a fraction of a second of a new track then halt. Clicking play/pause won't re-start playback, but moving the slider back to the beginning of the track will. Often I will go for a while without it happening, but once it does it seems to then occur again on nearly every new track.

I've experienced the same under Ubuntu 14.04, and before that on 12.04 going back as far as my initial Ubuntu install in mid 2012. Behavior hasn't altered at all over the last 2 years.

I can confirm this bug in Ubuntu 14.04, banshee. syslog shows:

pulseaudio[1769]: [alsa-sink-ALC272 Analog] ratelimit.c: 206 events suppressed
pulseaudio[1769]: [alsa-sink-ALC272 Analog] protocol-native.c: Failed to push data into queue

I've observed this happen very frequently in Ubuntu 14.04 on my Dell XPS 13 (2012). It happens when I'm playing high bitrate FLAC files (from Bill Evan's Complete Village Vanguard if that helps to reproduce)

May 19 15:46:35 shanly-Dell-System-XPS-L322X pulseaudio[2661]: message repeated 12 times: [ [alsa-sink-ALC275 Analog] protocol-native.c: Failed to push data into queue]
May 19 15:47:39 shanly-Dell-System-XPS-L322X pulseaudio[2661]: [alsa-sink-ALC275 Analog] ratelimit.c: 14 events suppressed
May 19 15:47:39 shanly-Dell-System-XPS-L322X pulseaudio[2661]: [alsa-sink-ALC275 Analog] protocol-native.c: Failed to push data into queue

I'm encountering this regularly as well on Ubuntu 14.04.02 with Rhythmbox 3.0.2.

I was encountering this bug after enabling the ReplayGain plug-in. I disabled it and the problem seems to be solved.

Happening here on Rhythmbox 3.0.2 and Ubuntu 14.04. Packages have been kept up to date via `apt-get update/upgrade` procedures.

I've installed a PulseAudio Equalizer and set echo cancellation module on to (try) fix my noisy microphone, but no other "audio mods" are used.

Enabling track crossfade and setting the amount to 0.1s "fixed" this issue for me.

`syslog` mentions the same message most have been seeing: `Failed to push data into queue`.

Issue happening on Fedora 26 x64 with latest available Rythmbox version.

2017 - still happening. LinuxMint 17.3 Cinnamon. Player is Banshee.

syslog snippet when playback stops:
Mar 31 02:39:27 mypc pulseaudio[2108]: [alsa-sink-ALC269VB Analog] ratelimit.c: 70 events suppressed
Mar 31 02:39:27 mypc pulseaudio[2108]: [alsa-sink-ALC269VB Analog] protocol-native.c: Failed to push data into queue

Always happens on transition from one track to another. Always resolved for me by simply double-clicking on the track that failed to start playback. No Banshee restart required, just click to play the next track and off it goes for a seemingly random number of tracks before it strikes again.

No biggy. Just posting this really to note it's still an unresolved issue.

Ubuntu 12.04 (precise) reached end-of-life on April 28, 2017.