Environment: OpenSUSE 13.2, x86_64 + latest patches.

On an almost daily basis, I find that the Pulseaudio volume control (pavucontrol) on my desktop system has hung over night. (Yes... I leave it on as I get calls at odd hours and don't want to be waiting for my system to become stable/usable.) By "hung" I mean that it is unresponsive to mouse clicks and attempts to move the sliders. Pulseaudio itself seems to be working without any problems when this happens -- I can launch an audio source and hear audio just fine. I just notice that pavucontrol itself is unresponsive and it requires that I close the window and launch a new instance to clears things up. (Maybe I'm old-fashioned but that ain't the way things are supposed to work.)

No audio is playing over night though I do have an audible alert that plays when T-bird receives new email and I would expect that to trigger several times each night. I can't recall the volume control going catatonic during the day when I nearly always have audio streaming.

I can't think of another application where this happens except perhaps Firefox but only when I find I'm pushing the envelope in terms of opened tabs and even then it might only be every couple or three weeks.

Has anyone else notice the Pulseaudio volume control hanging like this?

Any debugging tips for trying to ferret out the cause of the PA volume control hangs?

I do plan on upgrading to 14.x but, since OpenSUSE has been supplying patches to 13.2, I hadn't planned on making that jump (or should I say "Leap"? )for another few months. That leads me to my final question: Has anyone had pavucontrol hangs that no longer occurred after an upgrade? If so, I might be adjusting my timetable.

TIA...

--
Rick

You can adjust the audio volume control by
1. Alsamixer
2. Sound volume control of desktop enviroment
3. Pavucontrol

It is better to shutdown your computer over night.

Ubuntu has released 16.04 LTS lately.
Cost 19.42 € with shipping.

Not when I routinely get calls at all hours and need rapid access to the computer's contents. Systemd may have sped up boot times but not that much. (I have a lot of activities -- like backups -- that are scheduled to run at might as well.) If I'm going to be solving software problems by shutting down my system at night, I may as well have not deleted my Windows partition after that last XP self destruct years ago.

Interestingly, pavucontrol hasn't gone catatonic for days now.

You can remove pulseaudio (some contents can not be removed) and then

adjust the audio volume with alsamixer or the volume control of the desktop GUI.

Then pavucontrol is not nessecary any more and must not run.

I don't understand why you need pavucontrol open all the time. Once you set things, you can close it and the audio still works. You only need pavucontrol for changing audio settings, not for keeping the audio working. Perhaps I missed something.

Mainly because I have music or video streaming while I'm working and I find the other controls rather a pain to use. Pavucontrol's playback window is big and easily resizable to I can easily get to the volume controls and quickly adjust the levels if the phone rings, someone interrupts for a quick face-to-face, etc. Many of the myriad of mixers, volume controls, etc. are a pain to use quickly.

(Aside: I'm finding it rather disturbing how many folks now expect to have to bounce software to fix glitches. Oh, Microsoft, the damage you've done to the computer industry and user base.)

I've actually not experienced the pavucontrol freezes in several days now. Perhaps a recent update fixed it.

The only time I've ever seen hangs are when something else is hogging the CPU.

For me, it's easier to just adjust the main volume, using keystrokes on the keyboard, or the mouse on the volume control in the tray. But whatever works for you.