Linux

All things Linux. Especially if I had to dig and tear some of my hair out to solve a problem, in which case I’m putting the solution here.

  • Linux Tip #1: Max Amount of Locked Memory

    This is primarily for Mixbus and Mixbus32c running on Linux. It also applies to Ardour, which Mixbus is based on. The distro I’m using is Fedora Jam, however this most likely applies to whatever distro you’re using.

    Issue

    Mixbus 32c shows the following message when launched:

    WARNING: Your system has a limit for maximum amount of locked memory.
    This might cause Mixbus32C to run out of memory before your system runs
    out of memory.
    You can view the memory limit with ‘ulimit -l’, and it is normally controlled by /etc/security/limits.conf
    Solution

    Open a Terminal window and check the memory limit by typing ulimit -l . You may see something like this:

    $ ulimit -l
    8192

    This means that Mixbus is limited to 8GB of memory. To open this limit up, in Terminal, edit limits.conf:

    $ sudo vi /etc/security/limits.conf

    Add the following lines (or if they already exist with a # in front of it remove the # and change the number value of memlock to unlimited):

    @audio – rtprio  95
    @audio – memlock unlimited

    Save the file and check the ulimit again. You should see this:

    $ ulimit -l
    $ unlimited

    If you don’t see this, then restart. You can try logging out and back in, but I found this didn’t work. A full restart, for whatever reason did.

    Launch Mixbus. If you see the same warning message, check your group in Terminal:

    $ groups yourusername

    If you don’t see the audio group listed, for example:

    username : username wheel pkg-build

    add your user to the audio group:

    $ sudo usermod -a -G audio yourusername

    Check groups again. You should see audio listed:

    $ groups yourusername
    username : username wheel audio pkg-build

    Launch Mixbus and the message should be gone.