Sound fails in web browser - Ubuntu
 

I am using Ubuntu 10.04 on a dell desktop box. In Firefox, find that after it has run for a while, a couple of hours or so, the audio dies watching youtube or ted.com videos, etc. If I exit ff and start it up again, the sound is fine again for a while. To restore it, I only need to exit and restart the browser, not the whole machine. I have tried using google chrome instead but it does the same thing. Any suggestions?

Try the Seamonkey browser. I find it better (for my purposes). But that's not a solution of course.

Apparently the bare Mozilla engine seems to have a memory leak or something similar. I always run with a System Monitor in the KDE bottom bar to watch for memory, swap and CPU status (for when things get hairy). What happens with CPU/RAM/Swap status when the sound disappears?

Thanks for the suggestion, I will give that a try but since it does the same thing in googles browser, it seems likely to me that it is something in the sound system rather than the browser itself.

yeap... most likely that there is a problem with the sound system you use... maybe there is a problem with pulse audio configuration. Isn't that what you are using?

try some tests...
can 2 progs play sounds simultaneously?
are other progs having the same prob as firefox?

cheers

Yes, movie player and firefox can play at the same time.

It seems to be only happening with web browsers. I listen to podcasts with movie player and have never had a problem with it.

The thing that is odd is that I had this problem using Ubuntu 9.10 and hoped it would go away with 10.04 when I did the upgrade (not a fresh install) but it carries on.

Ubuntu bug # 434436 with pulseaudio at https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...io/+bug/434436 looks like it might address your problem.

It's reported for Karmic but I am also having it after upgrading to Lucid (10.04). If anyone has a fix for this with Ubuntu please help.