"cat: stdout: Invalid argument" when playing sound.

[JayArr]

Hi All

My sound has been acting up lately. It works for a while then stops and sometimes attempts to get it working again by opening mixer cause the KB and mouse to freeze up as well. Curiously - running nvidia-xconfig followed by a reboot brings it back.

Today I did ran nvidia-xconfig and rebooted then without starting firefox I opened a terminal and ran cat /dev/random > /dev/dsp1.1

I got white noise out of my speaker so I used my mouse to vary the volume using the icon in my system tray, the volume went up and down but after a few seconds the white noise changed tone then it just stopped and the terminal I started the command on returned

"cat: stdout: Invalid argument"

Here is my /boot/loader.conf:

kern.vty=vt
nvidia_load="YES"
linux_load="YES"
snd_driver="YES"

/etc/sysctl.conf

kern.randompid=1

cat /dev/sndstat

returns:

Installed devices:
pcm0: <Realtek ALC899 (Analog 5.1+HP/2.0)> (play/rec) default
pcm1: <Realtek ALC899 (Front Analog Mic)> (rec)
pcm2: <Realtek ALC899 (Rear Analog Line-in)> (rec)
No devices installed from userspace.

mixer

returns:

Mixer vol      is currently set to 100:100
Mixer pcm      is currently set to 100:100
Mixer speaker  is currently set to  59:59
Mixer mic      is currently set to  67:67
Mixer mix      is currently set to  37:37
Mixer rec      is currently set to  37:37
Mixer igain    is currently set to 100:100
Mixer ogain    is currently set to 100:100
Recording source: mic

Any ideas?


UPDATE: I just swapped the sound card from a different server, they are identical Sound Blaster SB1570s and the problem persists with the new second one so we can probably rule out hardware failure.