# HowTo: Crash a whole system just with small piece of GUI soft



## vlig (Aug 9, 2020)

Hello! I just found the solid way to crash the whole system just by trying a music making gui stuff.

Just install the following packages: *jackit*, *ardour5* and *zam-plugins-lv2*. Then, start *jackd* (`jackd -r -m -d oss -r 48000 -p 512 -C /dev/dsp0.0`), start *Ardour*, create a new audio track in the new session, add the new plugin (e.g. *ZamComp*) in the Mixer tab, and double click on this plugin.
Voila! The full deadly hung is spectated, no saving Ctrl-Alt-1,2,... no other action instead of hard reset is efficient.

What's the hell is that???


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## ralphbsz (Aug 10, 2020)

So you found a bug in some part of the audio infrastructure? If you want to debug it a little bit, you could file a bug report.


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## SKull (Aug 10, 2020)

vlig said:


> Hello! I just found the solid way to crash the whole system just by trying a music making gui stuff.
> 
> Just install the following packages: *jackit*, *ardour5* and *zam-plugins-lv2*. Then, start *jackd* (`jackd -r -m -d oss -r 48000 -p 512 -C /dev/dsp0.0`), start *Ardour*, create a new audio track in the new session, add the new plugin (e.g. *ZamComp*) in the Mixer tab, and double click on this plugin.
> Voila! The full deadly hung is spectated, no saving Ctrl-Alt-1,2,... no other action instead of hard reset is efficient.
> ...


I say this as a hobby music producer and a massive fan of FreeBSD:
Use windows for audio production. Neither Linux nor FreeBSD are worth the hassle in this particular area.


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## Zvoni (Aug 10, 2020)

SKull said:


> I say this as a hobby music producer and a massive fan of FreeBSD:
> Use windows for audio production. Neither Linux nor FreeBSD are worth the hassle in this particular area.


Yes, as a hobby-ist i'd also recommend rather Winbloze.
The moment it gets more serious, it's Mac or nothing (Cubase, ProTools)


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## olli@ (Aug 10, 2020)

vlig said:


> Hello! I just found the solid way to crash the whole system just by trying a music making gui stuff.
> 
> Just install the following packages: *jackit*, *ardour5* and *zam-plugins-lv2*. Then, start *jackd* (`jackd -r -m -d oss -r 48000 -p 512 -C /dev/dsp0.0`), start *Ardour*, create a new audio track in the new session, add the new plugin (e.g. *ZamComp*) in the Mixer tab, and double click on this plugin.
> Voila! The full deadly hung is spectated, no saving Ctrl-Alt-1,2,... no other action instead of hard reset is efficient.
> ...


Difficult to say without further investigation. Can you still ping the machine? (From a second machine if you have one.) If you can ping it, that means that the kernel hasn’t panicked. The next step would be to try to ssh to the machine (or open another kind of network connection, depending on what services are running). If that works, too, then it means that the kernel is running, and userland processes can still be started, too. At this point I would guess that the X11 server (Xorg) has crashed.

If the ping test fails, the kernel has probably hardlocked or panicked, and it was unable to switch back from Xorg to vt mode, so you cannot see the panic message. At this point it is difficult to perform further debugging if you’re not a developer yourself. Nonetheless it might make sense to submit a bug report via Bugzilla.


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## a6h (Aug 10, 2020)

SKull said:


> Use windows for audio production. Neither Linux nor FreeBSD are worth the hassle in this particular area.


I agree. DAW is one problem, setting up devices (sound, midi, multi/effect) is another. There's also other issues: lack of device specific software e.g. Scarlett MixControl for Focusrite user (near and dear to my heart example!).



Zvoni said:


> The moment it gets more serious, it's Mac or nothing (Cubase, ProTools)


When you are working with studio (most of), there's no other options, Pro Tools or Cubase. Cubase Pro to be exact, other versions of Cubase such as the Artist Edition is not practical (lack of Control Room, VariAudio, etc). But I don't understand your comment on Mac. Both are available for PC and Mac. Running DAW needs lots of RAM! Especially if your working with large number of tracks, samples and plugins (VST, AAX, ...).  With PC you're be able to assemble very customised (e.g. more RAM) system at lower price.



Zvoni said:


> Yes, as a hobby-ist i'd also recommend rather Winbloze.


For hobbyist, I'll go with Cockos Reaper. It's not just a hobbyist-only software. There're problems with Reaper too, e.g. UI, lack of plugins, weak score editor, ... . Reaper has a trial version. It works on Linux (experimental/sort of) and I had no luck to run it under wine, in FreeBSD.


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## vlig (Aug 10, 2020)

vigole said:


> For hobbyist, I'll go with Cockos Reaper.


Yeah! I use it on my main Arch Linux system! I' ve purchased it along with the plenty of VST-stuff. By the way, linvst is great!
Also, I have my X230 for deeper-*nix-self-studying purposes with FreeBSD on ZFS, that's why I've started this topic.

Thanks for your advice, guys, I'll try to dig into. But I MUST say, that was outstanding. I always thought that userspace is something farther and quite isolated, not affecting the whole OS in such an evil manner, but... Anyway, it is definitely a useful experience.


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## Mjölnir (Aug 10, 2020)

vlig said:


> I always thought that userspace is something farther and quite isolated, not affecting the whole OS in such an evil manner, but... Anyway, it is definitely a useful experience.


Well, in some cases the userspace application needs to have write access to a device (not just data, but configuration).  Then, if there are non-perfect checks applied by the driver, the device driver can crash the whole OS.  That can happen on any other OS as well.  Nevertheless, it's a bug, and you should report it on Bugzilla (on top of the forum page).


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## kpedersen (Aug 10, 2020)

vlig said:


> But I MUST say, that was outstanding. I always thought that userspace is something farther and quite isolated, not affecting the whole OS in such an evil manner, but... Anyway, it is definitely a useful experience.



It is slightly more rare but it can happen. I have seen it in the past most with 3D OpenGL games uploading some shader with a weird edge case to the GPU driver system causing a crash.
If you consider that most GUI systems now are extremely GPU acceleration dependent (many using OpenGL to render), it starts to make more sense.

I also had a fairly amusing one many years ago on Linux where if I shouted too hard into the microphone (any loud noise), it would kernel panic XD

Still.. on Windows ~9x I just sat there and itched my nose and it would occasionally freeze.


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## a6h (Aug 10, 2020)

vlig said:


> I use it on my main Arch Linux system!


If you have any success story regarding setup a home studio DAW/VST/... in FreeBSD, please share with us in another thread. There are some people who are interested in this topic. thanks

[EDIT] Also connecting Mixer, MIDI controller and dedicated sound cards.


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## vlig (Aug 10, 2020)

kpedersen said:


> on Linux where if I shouted too hard into the microphone ... on Windows ~9x I just sat there and itched my nose and it would occasionally freeze


maybe Linux is against death-metal))))) and win9x just have frozen with excitement))


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## SKull (Aug 10, 2020)

vigole said:


> If you have any success story regarding setup a home studio DAW/VST/... in FreeBSD, please share with us in another thread






_View: https://youtu.be/fNALnFIfenM_


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## a6h (Aug 10, 2020)

Talking about audio studio and missing the first principle: to Mic himself correctly.


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## olli@ (Aug 11, 2020)

vlig said:


> I always thought that userspace is something farther and quite isolated, not affecting the whole OS in such an evil manner, but...


From what I’ve read in this thread so far, it is not clear if the OS has crashed at all. It could well be that Xorg has crashed, so the machine appears unresponsive, but the OS might still be running happily. See my post #5 above for some hints how this could be investigated further.


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## Zvoni (Aug 11, 2020)

vigole said:


> When you are working with studio (most of), there's no other options, Pro Tools or Cubase. Cubase Pro to be exact, other versions of Cubase such as the Artist Edition is not practical (lack of Control Room, VariAudio, etc). *But I don't understand your comment on Mac. Both are available for PC and Mac. *Running DAW needs lots of RAM! Especially if your working with large number of tracks, samples and plugins (VST, AAX, ...).  With PC you're be able to assemble very customised (e.g. more RAM) system at lower price.


Correct!
I said Mac, because that's kinda the industry-standard in studios and/or live. Wherever i was in a situation, to get a look at such equipment, i always saw a Mac, never a Windows-Box.
Maybe it's about the OS-Footprint in RAM, maybe it's something like in the DTP-Industry, where Mac is everywhere, despite all programs being available for Windows.



vigole said:


> For hobbyist, I'll go with Cockos Reaper. It's not just a hobbyist-only software. There're problems with Reaper too, e.g. UI, lack of plugins, weak score editor, ... . Reaper has a trial version. It works on Linux (experimental/sort of) and I had no luck to run it under wine, in FreeBSD.


On Windows (as a hobbyist), i had some quite nice results with Sonar Platinum.


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## a6h (Aug 11, 2020)

Zvoni said:


> On Windows (as a hobbyist), i had some quite nice results with Sonar Platinum.


Sonar is a nice product and very popular among hobbyists (not to be confused with amateur!). It's rather expensive (compare to Reaper, not to the other DAWs). There are some objections to Sonar UI and workflow. It's all about specific workflow. Unfortunately if you have to work with some studio, you must adhere to their overall workflow, i.e. It's not just a matter of exporting final works to WAV/AIFF files. For whatever reason, if you have a background with Pro Tools, no other DAW/UI will satisfy you, and I understand that.


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## Phishfry (Aug 11, 2020)

Is it possible a license is needed making it exit out?
When I look at the homepage I see "Buy Now for $25"




__





						zam-plugins – ZamAudio.com
					






					www.zamaudio.com


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## a6h (Aug 11, 2020)

Phishfry said:


> Is it possible a license is needed making it exit out?


Its source is on Github  zamaudio / zam-plugins and it's GPL-2.0 License.


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