piper-tts: Illegal instruction on RPI4

[brianmay]

Nixpkgs version

• Stable (25.05)

Describe the bug

Illegal instruction after upgrade from 24.11 to 25.05

Steps to reproduce

[robotica@brian:/root]$ /nix/store/xi7ms9dzgvkxrgqi2ik385ygcb8j4lpq-piper-2023.11.14-2/bin/piper --model /nix/store/5d8x738x59dcss9h9agcn706bqzvnl1w-en_GB-alba-medium.onnx --config /nix/store/xcksfpr5d8qaf6vn3rvj0lrnbxhbffq7-en_GB-alba-medium.onnx.json --output_file /home/robotica/cache/cb848c39127becf1c3d889e510c68964.1.wav
Illegal instruction (core dumped)

Expected behaviour

Should not crash

Screenshots

No response

Relevant log output

Additional context

No response

System metadata

• system: "aarch64-linux"
• host os: Linux 6.6.51, NixOS, 25.05 (Warbler), 25.05.20250615.6c64dab
• multi-user?: yes
• sandbox: yes
• version: nix-env (Nix) 2.28.3

Notify maintainers

@mweinelt

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[mvnetbiz]

This appears to be for pkgs.piper-tts, a text-to-speech program, not pkgs.piper the gaming mouse configuration tool, maybe you could rename the title to piper-tts?

[brianmay]

Sorry, you are correct. Fixed.

[mvnetbiz]

What derivation produces the model file en_GB-alba-medium.onnx? Is that in nixpkgs?

[brianmay]

To the best of my knowledge nixpkgs doesn't have appropriate model files (correct me if I am wrong). These come from:

  piperVoice = {
    onnx = pkgs.fetchurl {
      url = "https://huggingface.co/rhasspy/piper-voices/resolve/main/en/en_GB/semaine/medium/en_GB-semaine-medium.onnx";
      hash = "sha256-1tq287kttD6j94x/INyOrbR6HxXYocnUUc88zSAaL2Y=";
      # hash = lib.fakeHash;
    };
    json = pkgs.fetchurl {
      url = "https://huggingface.co/rhasspy/piper-voices/raw/main/en/en_GB/semaine/medium/en_GB-semaine-medium.onnx.json";
      hash = "sha256-ZCXcuHhoQEO3fXcrFzrgBthqWDsRAwPt2ki4Q47O5e4=";
      # hash = lib.fakeHash;
    };
  };

The command I use is:

  pre_speech = pkgs.writeShellScript "pre-speech" ''
      ...
      echo "$*" | ${pkgs.piper-tts}/bin/piper --model ${cfg.voice.onnx_file} --config ${cfg.voice.json_file} --output_file "$tmp1"
      ...
    fi
  '';

[mweinelt]

Run dmesg and show me which instruction it wanted to execution but couldn't. Also possibly the backtrace caught by coredumpctl using coredumpctl debug (requires gdb).

My first guess is that any fancy instruction call comes from onnxruntime fwiw.

[brianmay]

I don't think this helps...

Jun 18 09:56:42 brian systemd-coredump[2120]: Process 2119 (piper) of user 1001 terminated abnormally with signal 4/ILL, processing...
Jun 18 09:56:42 brian systemd[1]: Started Process Core Dump (PID 2120/UID 0).
Jun 18 09:56:43 brian systemd-timesyncd[506]: Contacted time server [2400:8907:e001:262::1:123]:123 (2.nixos.pool.ntp.org).
Jun 18 09:56:43 brian systemd-coredump[2121]: Resource limits disable core dumping for process 2119 (piper).
Jun 18 09:56:43 brian systemd-coredump[2121]: [🡕] Process 2119 (piper) of user 1001 terminated abnormally without generating a coredump.
Jun 18 09:56:43 brian systemd[1]: systemd-coredump@4-2120-0.service: Deactivated successfully.

[root@brian:~]# coredumpctl debug
           PID: 2139 (piper)
           UID: 1001 (robotica)
           GID: 992 (robotica)
        Signal: 4 (ILL)
     Timestamp: Wed 2025-06-18 09:57:37 AEST (2s ago)
  Command Line: /nix/store/xi7ms9dzgvkxrgqi2ik385ygcb8j4lpq-piper-2023.11.14-2/bin/piper --model /nix/store/5d8x738x59dcss9h9agcn706bqzvnl1w-en_GB-alba-medium.onnx --config /nix/store/xcksfpr5d8qaf6vn3rvj0lrnbxhbffq7-en_GB-alba-medium.onnx.json --output_file /home/robotica/cache/cb848c39127becf1c3d889e510c68964.1.wav
    Executable: /nix/store/xi7ms9dzgvkxrgqi2ik385ygcb8j4lpq-piper-2023.11.14-2/bin/piper
 Control Group: /user.slice/user-0.slice/session-2.scope
          Unit: session-2.scope
         Slice: user-0.slice
       Session: 2
     Owner UID: 0 (root)
       Boot ID: dcaddfd432914e0a9d3cb566c8a42a11
    Machine ID: 17bfa026ea3b4ddd8e90ce9f2c2d170b
      Hostname: brian
       Storage: none
       Message: Process 2139 (piper) of user 1001 terminated abnormally without generating a coredump.

[mweinelt]

That log looks like the journal, not dmesg. There should be an audit log in dmesg that is relevant.

[brianmay]

Sorry, my bad. Nothing appears in dmesg, no audit, nothing.

This is the command that works under 24.11 (and it also works under 25.05 too):

[robotica@brian:/root]$ echo "I am robotica"  | /nix/store/00k2csxxf49fmgc7m4irj9rxmfxydn9z-piper-2023.11.14-2/bin/piper --model /nix/store/5d8x738x59dcss9h9agcn706bqzvnl1w-en_GB-alba-medium.onnx --config /nix/store/xcksfpr5d8qaf6vn3rvj0lrnbxhbffq7-en_GB-alba-medium.onnx.json --output_file /tmp/aaa

This is the failing command:

[robotica@brian:/root]$ echo "I am robotica" | /nix/store/xi7ms9dzgvkxrgqi2ik385ygcb8j4lpq-piper-2023.11.14-2/bin/piper --model /nix/store/5d8x738x59dcss9h9agcn706bqzvnl1w-en_GB-alba-medium.onnx --config /nix/store/xcksfpr5d8qaf6vn3rvj0lrnbxhbffq7-en_GB-alba-medium.onnx.json --output_file /tmp/aaa
Illegal instruction (core dumped)

[mweinelt]

Can you check if the following command causes the sigill? If so, I'd really want to defer to the package maintainers.

nix-shell -p "python3.withPackages (ps: [ ps.onnxruntime ] )" --command "python3 -c 'import onnxruntime'"

[brianmay]

That command appears to work... But suspect you might be correct that onnxruntime is be to blame regardless. Just need to be able to prove it :-)

[mvnetbiz]

I don't get the error on a Raspberry Pi 4 Model B, nixpkgs 9e83b64. Could your sd card/filesystem be corrupted?

[brianmay]

Same problem occurred on two different systems, no sign of sd card problems or corruption.

[brianmay]

I am on 25.05, you appear to be on unstable. Maybe this is important?