I have been playing around with kernel 2.6.13.2 for a week now, and for some reason, flash player always crashes on exit when visiting sites which use sound. This problem does not exist in kernel 2.6.11.12.

I use the same kernel config, alsa versions, firefox version - everything. But with kernel 2.6.13.2, i get crashes every time.

If anyone else is running kernel 2.6.13.2 and firefox where flash sound is working (or not working), let me know. I havent tried recompiling the alsa utilities under the 2.6.13.2 kernel, but that shouldnt be the problem...

Which ALSA version are you using? I think 2.6.11 uses 1.0.8 and 2.6.13 uses 1.0.9.

I use the recommended versions in BLFS 6.1 ( ALSA Library-1.0.9, ALSA Utilities-1.0.9a) with both kernels. I checked the alsa web page and those versions are still the latest stable ones.

Sound works perfectly in every other application. And flash also works nicely as long as there is no sound in the animation. Im not sure here what is the likely error source? Is it the alsa drivers, the kernel or the flash plugin? The flash plugin itself doesnt seem likely... seems more likely there is a driver bug in the kernel, doesnt it?

Do you run the 2.6.13.2 kernel yourself?

Yes, is there any particular site which crashes for you (post it here so I can see if it crashes me as well)?

All sites that use flash sound are crashing for me. To get it to crash i simply leave the site or click a link that makes the browser unload its current content. The crash behaviour is that firefox gets unresponsive while the last second of the sound keeps getting played back over and over again. The sound gets played back 14 times then the flash player exits and the new page gets loaded.

The rest of the system works fine during the crash. I can move windows, list directories and do pretty much anything. I can even have some mp3's playing and the sound from the mp3 doesnt get affected at all during the crash...

Its a pretty strange problem, specially since i dont get it at all on kernel 2.6.11.12 with the exact same config. I even tried re-compiling alsa-lib and alsa-utils under the new kernel, but that didnt make a difference (not that i thought it would...)

Not sure what i can try next. This crash happens for any user. Ive tried running as root and ive tried having the flash plugin both locally and installed in the global directory (for all users).

This problem is both interesting and annoying. Is there any way I can trace what the flash plugin is doing when its trying to exit?

Just noticed that this problem also exists in some other applications (no sound in kde, mplayer crashing on exit etc) so its definently not related to the flash plugin. Oh well, im sticking with 2.6.11.12 where things work for now.