sound blaster hangs in recent kernels

rjc@snoopy.virtual.net.au
Sat, 3 Jan 1998 21:23:20 +1100 (EST)


I've had a couple of total system lockups when playing MPEG audio files under
recent 2.1.x kernels. It seems that when the system is under some load while
playing the sound it may just totally hang (machine doesn't respond to the
keyboard and can't be pinged). I don't have magic-sysrq so I can't test with
that.

My system is an AMD586-133 with 32megs of RAM, IDE hard drive, Tulip network
driver, and SB16 card running headless. When I leave the machine doing nothing
but playing audio it seems reliable, but when being used for anything (even
just minor shell activity and IP routing) it may randomly lock. However I've
also occasionally run `find /` while playing sound without it crashing.
I have not found any way of reliably triggering the problem or working
around it. If anyone else gets the same problem could you please let me know
so we can try and figure out a pattern.

Russell Coker