I’m experiencing a highly bizarre problem as of yesterday. Whenever you plug in an USB stick then unmount it, you hear a notification sound for the device being plugged in then back out. The sounds in question are defined here:
This works normally and I hear the noise whenever I connect and disconnect my USB drive. What’s not normal is after plugging in the drive and until I restart my computer, the connect and disconnect sounds are suddenly randomly repeating every 1 to 5 minutes. I’m not connecting or disconnecting any new devices, yet once I’ve plugged in my drive I keep hearing the notification noises all the time from then on.
The process causing the sounds is called ALSA plug-in [kded6]. I muted it for the time being to stop the noises. This also mutes the genuine notification sounds but other system notifications can still be heard so for now it works. Has anyone else experienced this and knows what might be causing it?
The only explanation I can think of would be that your USB ports are going to sleep, which disconnects the plugged-in device, and that they are then waking up again and reconnecting the device.
What I cannot tell you is whether this is an artifact of your kernel, of your power management settings, of your hardware, or of the device itself.
If so, then logging out and logging back in would most likely remedy that.
Obviously, if it is a bug, then other people have not run into it yet, which means that it must be a bug that only gets triggered under very rare circumstances, and then logging out and logging back in will clear out the Plasma-specific memory contents. The chances of running into the same bug again should be infinitesimal.
If I was right about the intermittent connection, then dmesg should indeed show this.
Aha: I looked at the output of a simple sudo dmesg. I’m noticing a strange error repeating many times in a row at the end… can’t yet confirm if it’s what’s triggering the sounds, definitely could be. It appears to address my webcam, I don’t get how plugging my USB drive in and back out of a different port is what activates it. This is the segment, all that seems to change between them is the device number and input which increase by 1 each time (eg: 51 → 52 & 71 → 72).
[67662.625812] usb 5-1: USB disconnect, device number 52
[67662.969351] usb 5-1: new high-speed USB device number 53 using xhci_hcd
[67663.137911] usb 5-1: New USB device found, idVendor=0735, idProduct=0269, bcdDevice=ff.ff
[67663.137915] usb 5-1: New USB device strings: Mfr=2, Product=1, SerialNumber=3
[67663.137917] usb 5-1: Product: REDRAGON Live Camera
[67663.137919] usb 5-1: Manufacturer: Sonix Technology Co., Ltd.
[67663.137921] usb 5-1: SerialNumber: SN0001
[67663.186302] usb 5-1: Found UVC 1.00 device REDRAGON Live Camera (0735:0269)
[67663.218335] input: REDRAGON Live Camera: REDRAGON as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:08.1/0000:0c:00.3/usb5/5-1/5-1:1.0/input/input72
[67663.281363] usb 5-1: 3:1: cannot get freq at ep 0x84
[67664.178870] usb 5-1: 3:1: cannot get freq at ep 0x84
[67664.273375] usb 5-1: 3:1: cannot get freq at ep 0x84
USB ports are generally connected to the motherboard via USB hubs. If the different port is on the same USB hub, then this could be the trigger condition — see @nikgnomic’s post.
Are you also getting the pop-up notification showing options for the device, or any issues during transfers?
It might be worth running cheese and see if the webcam image blanks out when this happens, as well. Just to see if this is causing or related to the issue.
Also, tarnished, dirty or maybe worn USB contacts? This is rather common.
I tried both Cheese and OBS which is what I normally use to record. The webcam works well in both: I get good image without any stuttering or blackness or any other problems on that front.
At least at a first glance: I may need to leave it running in the background and see if the random notification sounds cause the camera to go black. I don’t get any written notification informing me what the device is, only the device (dis)connect audio.
