Audio related messages flooding the logs when no HDMI display present

Help and Support
1

For “reasons”, during the christmas holidays, I am using my regular OSMC Raspberry PI device abroad with no HDMI cable connected to a screen. No display at all. This is useful to me because this device does other functions beside OSMC.

I noticed these messages flooding /home/osmc/.kodi/temp/kodi.log:

2024-12-27 02:00:52.928 T:688      info <general>: CActiveAESink::OpenSink - initialize sink
2024-12-27 02:00:52.929 T:688      info <general>: CAESinkALSA::Initialize - Attempting to open device "default"
2024-12-27 02:00:52.931 T:688      info <general>: CAESinkALSA - Unable to open device "default" for playback
2024-12-27 02:00:52.931 T:688     error <general>: CAESinkALSA::Initialize - failed to initialize device "default"
2024-12-27 02:00:52.931 T:688     error <general>: CActiveAESink::OpenSink - no sink was returned
2024-12-27 02:00:52.931 T:687     error <general>: ActiveAE::InitSink - returned error
2024-12-27 02:00:52.935 T:674     error <general>: failed to duplicate EGL fence fd (EGL_SUCCESS)

The logfile grows fast, possibly filling soon the microSD and decreasing its lifetime.

Beside that, maybe unrelated, KODI is using all the file descriptors (1024 in my case) trying to do “something”. Maybe related to those logs or not:

root@osmcpi:/home/osmc/.kodi/temp# ls -la /proc/674/fd|tail
lr-x------ 1 root root 64 Dec 27 02:03 990 -> anon_inode:sync_file
lr-x------ 1 root root 64 Dec 27 02:03 991 -> anon_inode:sync_file
lr-x------ 1 root root 64 Dec 27 02:03 992 -> anon_inode:sync_file
lr-x------ 1 root root 64 Dec 27 02:03 993 -> anon_inode:sync_file
lr-x------ 1 root root 64 Dec 27 02:03 994 -> anon_inode:sync_file
lr-x------ 1 root root 64 Dec 27 02:03 995 -> anon_inode:sync_file
lr-x------ 1 root root 64 Dec 27 02:03 996 -> anon_inode:sync_file
lr-x------ 1 root root 64 Dec 27 02:03 997 -> anon_inode:sync_file
lr-x------ 1 root root 64 Dec 27 02:03 998 -> anon_inode:sync_file
lr-x------ 1 root root 64 Dec 27 02:03 999 -> anon_inode:sync_file

Checking /proc/674/fdinfo/ I see this (the same data for any file descriptor):

root@osmcpi:/home/osmc/.kodi/temp# cat /proc/674/fdinfo/999
pos:    0
flags:  02000000
mnt_id: 14
ino:    7559

I can not determine what mount id 14 filesystem is, even using findmnt.

All filedescriptors stuck prevent my kodi extensions to work correctly, for instance, to update IMDb ratings or screensavers. Not very important while this raspberry is headless during this trip, but I wonder if both issues are related and how to prevent them.

Interestingly, if I plug the HDMI wire to a display, everything works fine.

So, my questions:

  1. How can I avoid flooding the log my Raspberry PI is running OSMC while headless?. This is an old issue of mine with some friends’ raspberries OSMC when they switch off their TV.

  2. What is the reason for having all file descriptors (1024) stuck and how to solve it?

Happy Holidays and thanks for your time.

This is a Raspberry PI 3B+, OSMC fully updated.

2

You can disable Kodi’s log with an advancedsettings.xml tweak…

<advancedsettings version="1.0">
<loglevel>-1</loglevel>  
</advancedsettings>
3

Not a bad idea, but it is hiding a subyacent issue I would like to understand and solve. I am also interested in logging in general, it is useful for me (I have my own addons, for instance), it would be more interesting to hide those specific messages.

Thanks for the suggestion. It is useful.

Anybody can provide some root cause analysis?

4

You should stop Kodi then (systemctl stop mediacenter)