[PD] pd-watchdog

[Richard Lewis]

Hello Pd-list,

I have a patch which I'm trying to run on a headless, remote server. It works 
on my laptop and I'm sure I've seen it working on my server before. But at 
the moment, when I start it I get all the initialisation messages (from 
mp3cast~ etc.) but then it just starts going

watchdog: signaling pd...
watchdog: signaling pd...

Fortunately, I'm using GNU screen so in another session I can monitor whats 
going. Nothing much.

AFAICT, my patch isn't really running. Because when I try to connect to the 
MP3 stream from Icecast, it returns a 404 error.

I've tried Googling for this sort of thing and I've found one suggestion that 
it may not be able to connect to an X display. Well, I don't even have X 
running here. And another simply explaining that the watchdog process just 
has a higher priority than the pd process and attempts to stop pd from eating 
all the system resources.

Does anyone know how to diagnose these sorts of problems?

I'm using Debian "testing" with Pd 0.39.2 and pd-extended binary package 
0.39.2.

I'm running pd like this:

# pd -path /usr/lib/pd/extra/ -rt -oss -nogui mixer-mp3cast.pd &

The output I get is:

mp3cast~: set server type to IceCast
mp3cast~: mountpoint set to snapescape1007.mp3
mp3cast~: name set to snapescape1007
mp3cast~: setting mp3 stream to 44100Hz, 64kbit/s, mode 3, quality 4
mp3cast~: description set to SnapeScape
mp3cast~: genre set to other
priority 8 scheduling enabled.
priority 6 scheduling enabled.
mp3cast~: connecting to port 8080
mp3cast~: logging in to IceCast server...
watchdog: signaling pd...
watchdog: signaling pd...

And after that I get no further output when I send additional messages (like 
to stop the stream, etc.)

I've tried running pd both as an ordinary user and as root. And I've also 
tried running it with the -jack option instead of -oss.

Obviously, I'm fiddling with this patch while writing this email and, 
occasionally, when running pd as a normal user without -rt it begins to work. 
But then, if I try it again, it stops working. At the moment (running as 
normal user, no -rt, with -jack) I get no error messages and no output.

Um, I have no idea whats going on :-(

Richard.
-- 
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Richard Lewis
http://www.richard-lewis.me.uk/
JID: ironchicken at jabber.earth.li
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