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TUI: ALSA stderr errors from the session-complete notification sound corrupt the display on machines without audio devices #54130
Description
Description
Running the opencode v2 TUI on a headless Ubuntu 24.04 VM (no sound card) over SSH. Every time a prompt response finishes, the TUI display gets corrupted: the screen fills with garbage text — a mix of ALSA errors and stray debug/log lines drawn on top of the TUI. Typing clears small patches locally, and resizing the window (forcing a full repaint) restores the display until the next completion.
Reproduces in multiple terminals (VS Code integrated terminal, WezTerm), so it is not terminal-specific.
Likely cause: the built-in internal:notifications TUI plugin plays the done sound when a session goes idle (sound: { when: "always" }), which initializes native audio via Audio.create() from @opentui/core (packages/tui/src/audio.ts). On machines without audio devices, libasound writes errors directly to stderr, which lands on the alternate screen and corrupts the TUI:
ALSA lib conf.c:5731:(snd_config_expand) Evaluate error: No such file or directory
ALSA lib confmisc.c:165:(snd_config_get_card) Cannot get card index for 0
ALSA lib pcm.c:2721:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM dmix:0,0
Screenshot
Confirmed workaround: setting tui.attention.enabled = false in opencode.json stops the garbage (the audio module is never initialized).
Related: #48520 tracks the general class of stray output corrupting the alternate screen.
Plugins
None
OpenCode version
2.0.26
Steps to reproduce
- Run the TUI over SSH on a headless Linux machine without a sound card (e.g. an Ubuntu 24.04 VM)
- Submit a prompt and wait for the response to complete
- When the session goes idle, ALSA/stderr garbage is drawn over the TUI; resizing the terminal forces a repaint and clears it until the next completion
Screenshot and/or share link
No screenshot attached; happy to capture one on request.
Operating System
Ubuntu 24.04 (headless VM, no sound card); client is Windows 11
Terminal
VS Code integrated terminal and WezTerm (both affected)
Activity
opencode-agent commentedon Oct 9, 2026
Thanks for the detailed report and for confirming the workaround. I think this is a duplicate of #41763: on Linux machines without a sound card, the TUI's native audio backend makes ALSA write errors to stderr, and they get drawn over the TUI. The attention sound played when a turn finishes is one of the triggers.
Possible duplicates and related issues, ordered by likelihood:
Until it's fixed, you can turn off just the sounds with
"attention": { "sound": false }in your TUI config and keep notifications on, or keep usingenabled: false.The bot will close this issue as a duplicate in 1 day unless you reply explaining how your problem is different.
opencode-agent commentedon Oct 10, 2026
Closing as a duplicate of #41763, since there's been no reply in the past day. That issue covers the same problem: on Linux machines with no sound card, the TUI's audio backend writes ALSA errors to stderr and they corrupt the screen, often when a turn finishes and the done sound plays. Please follow #41763 for updates, and add details there if your setup behaves differently. Open PR #51854 aims to skip audio when there is no playback device. Until then,
"attention": { "sound": false }stops the errors and keeps notifications on. If this turns out to be a different problem, reply here and we can reopen it.