PulseAudio: connection terminated/daemon killed

[Zombie Feynman]

When trying to play music, I'm getting "connection terminated" errors from PulseAudio. This happens with Clementine (my preferred player), Lollypop and VLC, and most likely others as well. This will either happen immediately, or after a few seconds of starting a track; either way, playback stops.

Digging through the system journal, I can see that PulseAudio is somehow getting killed: when triggering the bug, get the following from journalctl | grep -i pulse:

Code:

Aug 24 17:22:10 mobian sm.puri.Phosh.desktop[3219]: 17:22:10.354 ERROR GstEnginePipeline:718            1 "../ext/pulse/pulsesink.c(1750): gst_pulseringbuffer_commit (): /GstPipeline:pipeline/GstBin:audiobin/GstAutoAudioSink:autoaudiosink-1/GstPulseSink:autoaudiosink-1-actual-sink-pulse"
Aug 24 17:22:10 mobian callaudiod[2082]: Error in PulseAudio context: Connection terminated
Aug 24 17:22:10 mobian systemd[660]: pulseaudio.service: Main process exited, code=killed, status=9/KILL
Aug 24 17:22:10 mobian sm.puri.Phosh.desktop[3219]: 17:22:10.367 ERROR GstEnginePipeline:718            1 "../ext/pulse/pulsesink.c(412): gst_pulsering_is_dead (): /GstPipeline:pipeline/GstBin:audiobin/GstAutoAudioSink:autoaudiosink-1/GstPulseSink:autoaudiosink-1-actual-sink-pulse"
Aug 24 17:22:10 mobian sm.puri.Phosh.desktop[3219]: 17:22:10.368 ERROR GstEnginePipeline:718            1 "../ext/pulse/pulsesink.c(412): gst_pulsering_is_dead (): /GstPipeline:pipeline/GstBin:audiobin/GstAutoAudioSink:autoaudiosink-1/GstPulseSink:autoaudiosink-1-actual-sink-pulse"
Aug 24 17:22:10 mobian sm.puri.Phosh.desktop[3219]: 17:22:10.369 ERROR GstEnginePipeline:718            1 "../ext/pulse/pulsesink.c(412): gst_pulsering_is_dead (): /GstPipeline:pipeline/GstBin:audiobin/GstAutoAudioSink:autoaudiosink-1/GstPulseSink:autoaudiosink-1-actual-sink-pulse"
Aug 24 17:22:10 mobian sm.puri.Phosh.desktop[3219]: 17:22:10.370 ERROR GstEnginePipeline:718            1 "../ext/pulse/pulsesink.c(412): gst_pulsering_is_dead (): /GstPipeline:pipeline/GstBin:audiobin/GstAutoAudioSink:autoaudiosink-1/GstPulseSink:autoaudiosink-1-actual-sink-pulse"
Aug 24 17:22:10 mobian systemd[660]: pulseaudio.service: Failed with result 'signal'.
Aug 24 17:22:10 mobian systemd[660]: pulseaudio.service: Consumed 1.265s CPU time.
Aug 24 17:22:10 mobian systemd[660]: pulseaudio.service: Scheduled restart job, restart counter is at 20.
Aug 24 17:22:10 mobian systemd[660]: pulseaudio.service: Consumed 1.265s CPU time.
Aug 24 17:22:10 mobian pulseaudio[3263]: Stale PID file, overwriting.
Aug 24 17:22:12 mobian sm.puri.Phosh.desktop[3219]: 17:22:12.023 ERROR GstEnginePipeline:718            2 "../ext/pulse/pulsesink.c(1750): gst_pulseringbuffer_commit (): /GstPipeline:pipeline/GstBin:audiobin/GstAutoAudioSink:autoaudiosink-19/GstPulseSink:autoaudiosink-19-actual-sink-pulse"
Aug 24 17:22:12 mobian callaudiod[2082]: Error in PulseAudio context: Connection terminated
Aug 24 17:22:12 mobian sm.puri.Phosh.desktop[3219]: 17:22:12.032 ERROR GstEnginePipeline:718            2 "../ext/pulse/pulsesink.c(412): gst_pulsering_is_dead (): /GstPipeline:pipeline/GstBin:audiobin/GstAutoAudioSink:autoaudiosink-19/GstPulseSink:autoaudiosink-19-actual-sink-pulse"
Aug 24 17:22:12 mobian sm.puri.Phosh.desktop[3219]: 17:22:12.037 ERROR GstEnginePipeline:718            2 "../ext/pulse/pulsesink.c(412): gst_pulsering_is_dead (): /GstPipeline:pipeline/GstBin:audiobin/GstAutoAudioSink:autoaudiosink-19/GstPulseSink:autoaudiosink-19-actual-sink-pulse"
Aug 24 17:22:12 mobian sm.puri.Phosh.desktop[3219]: 17:22:12.038 ERROR GstEnginePipeline:718            2 "../ext/pulse/pulsesink.c(412): gst_pulsering_is_dead (): /GstPipeline:pipeline/GstBin:audiobin/GstAutoAudioSink:autoaudiosink-19/GstPulseSink:autoaudiosink-19-actual-sink-pulse"
Aug 24 17:22:12 mobian systemd[660]: pulseaudio.service: Main process exited, code=killed, status=9/KILL
Aug 24 17:22:12 mobian systemd[660]: pulseaudio.service: Failed with result 'signal'.
Aug 24 17:22:12 mobian systemd[660]: pulseaudio.service: Scheduled restart job, restart counter is at 21.
Aug 24 17:22:12 mobian pulseaudio[3279]: Stale PID file, overwriting.

Strangely, dmesg does not reveal any segfaults or OOM kills. When I run

Code:

pulseaudio -k; pulseaudio -vvvv --log-target=/home/mobian/pa_`date +%s`.log

and trigger the fault, I get the following log: http://dpaste.com/897C89EQP. Strangely, it doesn't look like PA is killed here. When the problem is triggered, the repeated lines

Code:

D: [pulseaudio] module-udev-detect.c: /dev/snd/controlC0 is accessible: yes
D: [pulseaudio] module-udev-detect.c: Resuming all sinks and sources of card alsa_card.platform-sound.

are produced, and nothing else.

This does not happen with the audio from calls, nor, as far as I can tell, from videos played in Chromium.

At the moment, I can get VLC to work if I bypass PA altogether (env -i DISPLAY=:0 HOME=$HOME vlc does the trick), but I would of course like to get this fixed properly. Any pointers, anyone?

EDIT: issue persists after switching to Mobian Unstable.
EDIT 2: problem also persists after disabling SHM, but I managed to get a better log by adding -vvvv in the systemd unit: http://dpaste.com/DA4XGCLR8
EDIT 3: also a crash with VLC: http://dpaste.com/8GREDS53M
EDIT 4 "fixed" by adding --realtime=no to the arguments in /usr/lib/systemd/user/pulseaudio.service.