Playback stops for no apparent reason, vlc unresponsive even to kill

[depesz]

Hi,

I have vlc 3.0.6 on Debian testing (buster), running on Intel NUC with Gemini Lake, Intel(R) Celeron(R) J4005 CPU.

I have a playlist with couple hundred clips, ranging from 5 minutes to 90, that gets played back in random order.

Unfortuantely - after couple of movies - sometimes 2, sometimes 4, vlc halts. There is 0 cpu usage, nothing is displayed.

Usually it happens on start of new clip, and the halt is co complete that clip filename that usually gets displayed for couple of seconds - stays on screen.

I run vlc with:

vlc -vv --video-on-top -Z -L -f ftp://some.server/vlc/00-saturday.m3u 2>&1 | ts | tee vlc.log

In another terminal I made screenshot every minute (the video playback is in a room i generally don't go to, so i don't see it all the time).

Based on changes in screenshots, I captured case where playback worked for ~ 3 hours. Vlc ws started at 12:41:05, and "frozen" screenshots started at least at 15:01:01.

Log is available here: https://depesz.com/vlc.log.gz

What can I do to fix the problem? What details can I provide you with so you can help me?

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

The only way that KILL signal will not work is if the VLC process crashed within a device driver in kernel mode. I doubt that anybody here can debug that sort of problem.

[depesz]

So what are my options now?

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

Kernel debugging...

[depesz]

While it does make *some* sense, I do recall that couple of months ago it worked OK (but then I reinstalled system on this box, and that could have caused problems). What's more - I seem to recall strace showing that vlc is doing stuff... And it definitely prints information to screen ...

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

If VLC runs in user mode, then it can be killed.

[depesz]

Tried today, with different playlist.

Ran VLC using:

Code: Select all

vlc -vvv --video-on-top --no-audio -Z -L -f /media/MEDIA/music-videos/all.music-videos.m3u 2>&1 | ts '%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S

Log was gzipped and is available to download from my site.

Vlc was started at 10:31:26.

In the mean time, every minute, I was taking screenshot of display. From 10:38:36 screenshots stopped changing.

I discovered it around 10:46 and took strace from vlc process, using:

Code: Select all

strace -f -o strace.log -s 256 -tt -T -p 23450

Killed strace after ~ 30 seconds, and log is here.

3 files were played:

• at 10:31:28 : /media/MEDIA/music-videos/Nickelback/Nickelback Dark Horse Tour Video - Drum Tech - lK3TzRC7FBM.mkv
• at 10:33:06 : /media/MEDIA/music-videos/Korn/Jonathan Davis And The SFA - 'Alone I Break' live - CbnQMgzJIFo.mkv
• at 10:38:07 : /media/MEDIA/music-videos/Korn/Korn - Next In Line (Official Audio) - 28HvfNtCVNk.mkv

"ffprobe" output for them is on my site.

At the end, screen was showing this image.

Interestingly - in todays case I was able to Ctrl-C vlc. Not sure what it changes, but that's how it looks today. But previous run, also with this playlist, ended up in "no-ctrl-c/no-kill" scenario, but then, strace.log was very short, and was not adding new lines there, so I assume it was kernel issue. Don't have the logs from this case, though.

You can also see my config files:

• vlcrc
• vlc-qt-interface.conf

Hope that it will help, as I'm definitely out of ideas.

[depesz]

And one more try, this time it ended in situation when I can't ctrl-c or normally kill vlc. Only kill -9 worked.

To make debugging even simpler I ran strace in a loop:

Code: Select all

do forever timeout 10 strace -q -s 256 -f -tt -T -o "${log_file}" -p "${vlc_pid}" sleep 1 minute end

All files are available for download:

• all.straces.tar.gz - this is 18MB tarball, and on unpack it takes ~ 130MB.
• ffprobe.output.txt.gz
• final.screenshot.scaled.png
• vlc.log.gz

[InTheWings]

try with --no-audio

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

In this thread, you have reported three different problems. It's way too confusing to help you TBH.

[1MAXT3HKphYo]

[*]at 10:31:28 : /media/MEDIA/music-videos/Nickelback/Nickelback Dark Horse Tour Video - Drum Tech - lK3TzRC7FBM.mkv

I think I found the problem. Maybe a new selection of music?

[depesz]

try with --no-audio

Tried. Actually I was doing almost all my tests with noaudio.

[depesz]

In this thread, you have reported three different problems. It's way too confusing to help you TBH.

Not sure how these are three problems. The problem for me is: I can't play playlists because vlc freezes. Sometimes (very, very rarely) I can kill it, but usually I have to kill -9.

I showed 3 cases to make it clear that the problem does not stem from single broken file.

[depesz]

I have another case. I plan on adding new cases when possible, so that perhaps some pattern will emerge. If that's a problem, let me know, I'll stop.

In here, the important part is that CTRL-C did work.

Command ran:

Code: Select all

vlc -vvv --video-on-top -Z -L -f /media/MEDIA/music-videos/all.music-videos.m3u

• VLC started: 2019-02-11 09:38:21
• VLC failed a bit before: 10:20:00

Files with debug data:

• all.straces.tar.gz - this is 31.18 MB tarball, and on unpack it takes ~ 212 MB.
• ffprobe.output.txt.gz
• final.screenshot.scaled.png
• vlc.log.gz