Mic on L4D2 Just Randomly Stops Working

[kisak-valve]

Issue transferred from https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux/issues/5202. @buckwangs posted on 2017-10-10T08:33:43:

Your system information

• Steam client version (build number or date): Latest (not beta)
• Distribution (e.g. Ubuntu): Fedora 26 (up to date)
• Opted into Steam client beta?: [Yes/No] No
• Have you checked for system updates?: [Yes/No] Yes

Please describe your issue in as much detail as possible:

Randomly at some point, my mic just stops working in Left 4 Dead 2. This was not a problem until very recently. It's quite upsetting as voice is a pretty big deal in the game and just losing it out of nowhere sucks quite a lot. I don't know the steps to reproduce it but lately it's pretty reliably just failing on me out of nowhere. Are there any logs or something I can do to figure out what's going on?

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@kisak-valve commented on 2017-10-10T12:05:02

Hello @buckwangs, L4D2 should be using OpenAL for voice chat and the most recent game update was 2 months ago. If it was known good in this time, then it hints that a system change may be involved.

[buckwangs]

Thank you @kisak-valve you may be right as I've upgraded from 25 to 26 about 2 weeks ago. That's something to go on, I appreciate your time :+1:

[buckwangs]

Is it possible to re-open this bug? It never got solved (on completely different hardware and distro) and after discovering this bug I am beginning to think they're related.

[kisak-valve]

Hello @buckwangs, this issue report isn't closed as indicated in the top left corner of the issue report.

[buckwangs]

@kisak-valve thank you, my apologies

I've kind of discovered that high memory usage can kill the microphone. I had every possible setting on blast and the Buried Deep campaign will cause the memory to spike to 2GB on launch and although everything seems fine in game, no lag, perfect audio, liquid, the microphone would permanently die until restarting the game.

The following provided a clue (every time I would push the push to talk key)

[ALSOFT] (EE) Failed to set real-time priority for thread: Operation not permitted (1)
mmap() failed: Cannot allocate memory
Failed to create permanent mapping for memfd region with ID = 3175669983
mmap() failed: Cannot allocate memory
Failed to create permanent mapping for memfd region with ID = 888982075
Ignoring received block reference with non-registered memfd ID = 888982075

I launched the game 25 times with all settings on blast and 25 times the game kills the microphone. So, I thought I'd try a greater heapsize.

-heapsize X doesn't do a thing and in fact, crashes the game

I tried 12GB, 4GB, 3.5GB, etc and I can't find a combination that suits the game. If I even launch with heapsize ANYTHING, I'll know right away I'm headed for trouble as no sound will play at all for anything I might do in which there is audio feedback. Simply no audio whatsoever. Then, crash.

Lowering quality can be a quick band-aid

It kind of sucks but lowering all performance values to a medium setting made it possible for the first time, to be able to use the microphone from start to finish in Buried Deep. That's a good sign

BUT

When the game finished and I was back at the menu, the microphone was dead again. I'd rather the microphone never die but would rather it die when a game is not in progress than die in the middle of one.

L4D2 is my favorite game and I would love to help where I can to put the final nail in the coffin of this bug. Please advise.

OS: Manjaro Linux x86_64
Host: X570 AORUS PRO WIFI -CF
Kernel: 5.8.18-1-MANJARO
Uptime: 2 days, 21 hours, 18 mins
Packages: 1423 (pacman)
Shell: zsh 5.8
Resolution: 3840x2160, 2160x3840
DE: Plasma 5.20.3
WM: KWin
Theme: Breeze [Plasma], Adwaita [GTK2], Default [GTK3]
Icons: breath2-dark [Plasma], breath2-dark [GTK2/3]
CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 3900X (24) @ 3.800GHz
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980
GPU: AMD ATI Radeon RX 470/480/570/570X/580/580X/590
Memory: 43750MiB / 64264MiB