[gentoo-user] problem trying to play sound when pulse audio is enabled

[cov...@ccs.covici.com]

Hi. I have not used pulseaudio at all, but with gnome 3.8 I guess it
must be there, but when I try to play a sound using either mplayer from
the console which works fine withalsa, or even aplay, I get no sound
unless I change the /etc/pulse/client.conf to spawn=no . Anyway to fix
this?

Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

--
Your life is like a penny. You're going to lose it. The question is:
How do
you spend it?

John Covici
cov...@ccs.covici.com

[Canek Peláez Valdés]

On Sun, Apr 28, 2013 at 7:56 PM, <cov...@ccs.covici.com> wrote:
> Hi. I have not used pulseaudio at all, but with gnome 3.8 I guess it
> must be there, but when I try to play a sound using either mplayer from
> the console which works fine withalsa, or even aplay, I get no sound
> unless I change the /etc/pulse/client.conf to spawn=no .

Unless you have a very specific setup, you should not need to touch
the files under /etc/pulse. Also, are you trying to run the
system-wide PulseAudio service? Because that's basically wrong:

http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/PulseAudio/Documentation/User/WhatIsWrongWithSystemWide

> Anyway to fix this?

If you are running PA as a normal user (as you should), then perhaps
the per-application volume for MPlayer is muted. While playing
something with MPlayer, go to Settings -> Sound, then select the
Applications tab, and there should be a volume slider for all the
applications using audio. Just adjust as necessary.

Regards.
--
Canek Peláez Valdés
Posgrado en Ciencia e Ingeniería de la Computación
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México

[cov...@ccs.covici.com]

Canek Peláez Valdés <can...@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Sun, Apr 28, 2013 at 7:56 PM, <cov...@ccs.covici.com> wrote:
> > Hi. I have not used pulseaudio at all, but with gnome 3.8 I guess it
> > must be there, but when I try to play a sound using either mplayer from
> > the console which works fine withalsa, or even aplay, I get no sound
> > unless I change the /etc/pulse/client.conf to spawn=no .
>
> Unless you have a very specific setup, you should not need to touch
> the files under /etc/pulse. Also, are you trying to run the
> system-wide PulseAudio service? Because that's basically wrong:
>
> http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/PulseAudio/Documentation/User/WhatIsWrongWithSystemWide
>
> > Anyway to fix this?
>
> If you are running PA as a normal user (as you should), then perhaps
> the per-application volume for MPlayer is muted. While playing
> something with MPlayer, go to Settings -> Sound, then select the
> Applications tab, and there should be a volume slider for all the
> applications using audio. Just adjust as necessary.

I got no sound when pa was run as a user. I am running these apps from
the console -- apps such as aplay or anything which uses alsa. So I
can't adjust any volumes under gnome, etc.

[Canek Peláez Valdés]

OK, then the real problem is that you had no sound with PA running
with your user. Get back to user mode (check out the link I posted;
almost *nobody* should run PA in system mode), and check the volume
levels (again, Settings->Sound). Perhaps it was something as simple as
a muted check box.

[Canek Peláez Valdés]

On Sun, Apr 28, 2013 at 10:07 PM, <cov...@ccs.covici.com> wrote:

Also, from the console you can use pactl. To play a sample sound there, do:

pactl play-sample 0
pactl play-sample 1

It should work. You can also set the volume from here:

pactl set-sink-volume 0 "100%"

0 is usually the "master" volume.

Check out man pactl.

[cov...@ccs.covici.com]

But I don't have gnome even running, so I can't access any of that -- I
am just using apps from the text console. Is there a text file or
something I can deal with?

[cov...@ccs.covici.com]

OK, I am looking at that, lots of things I don't understand, but I will
read some more.

[Canek Peláez Valdés]

See my second mail.

[cov...@ccs.covici.com]

Well, in either system or user mode, root can play sound whereas a
regular user gets silent, but without pulseaudio -- spawn=no, then a
regular user can play sound. Does this give a clue?

[Canek Peláez Valdés]

Not really; as I said, the PA documentation clearly says that if you
use system mode "You are on your own. You need to know you way around,
be able to write init scripts, dbus policies, to fix up device
permissions, and unix users, you need to pass around security cookies
and more."

I haven't ever used system-wide PA.

I think of the following; try to delete both /root/.pulse and
$HOME/.pulse, and rebooting (probably a logout/login should suffice,
but you never know).

Another thing: if you installed PA since GNOME 3.8 needs it, why are
you using it without GNOME? If you use GNOME, the session manager will
automatically start PA as a user for you, and everything should work.
If you are not running GNOME, why do you run PA? If you are at the
console without X running, just don't use PA. Use mplayer -ao alsa or
whatever.

Or do you want to run several audio apps in the console?

[cov...@ccs.covici.com]

I want to run apps from the console, but to start gnome when I need it.
I am running pa as a user and things are still not working, except for
the root user who can play sounds.

Thanks so much for all of your help.

[Canek Peláez Valdés]

Then do that. When you start GNOME, it will start PA automatically:
you don't need to do anything. Don't try to start PA yourself; it's
DBus activated.

> I am running pa as a user and things are still not working, except for
> the root user who can play sounds.

I repeat: you don't need to run PA. GNOME will start it for you.

[cov...@ccs.covici.com]

But will that workif I have spawn=no in my /etc/pulse/client.conf which
I have to have for regular apps to work from theconsole? Or is there
some other way to make this happen?

[Canek Peláez Valdés]

I don't understand the question. If you don't run PA by yourself, then
it will be started only when using GNOME. And if you are using GNOME,
you can use the nice sound settings dialog to get your sound.

If you don't start GNOME, then PA will not be started. If you don't
have sound in your console even without PA running, then is for some
issue completely unrelated to PA.

PA should not be started if you only log in through the console.
Unless you are still running it system-wide, which is basically
unsupported.

[cov...@ccs.covici.com]

OK, we will see what happens, so I have set spawn=no which should work
to prevent pa except in gnome, so hopefully that should work.

Thanks for clarifying this for me.

[Kevin Thompson]

I had the same issue here when installing pulseaudio. I don't use GNOME,
so that does take part of the equation away. The problem was solved by
changing permissions to /dev/snd and it's containing files. After
chmodding /dev/snd/* to 666, I was able to play sounds as a normal user.
In the Gentoo guide, it mentions this, and it also mentions taking your
user out of the audio group if you're currently in it. Please see
http://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/PulseAudio#Root_can_play_sound.2C_other_users_cannot
for more detailed information.

Very Respectfully,

Kevin Thompson

[cov...@ccs.covici.com]

Thanks for your response, but here is my /dev/snd directory, so its a
mystery to me. I am, however in the audio group, I wonder if that makes
a difference.
total 0
drwxr-xrwx 3 freeswitch apache 280 Apr 27 15:53 ./
drwxr-xr-x 17 root root 4980 Apr 28 22:58 ../
drwxr-xrwx 2 freeswitch apache 60 Apr 27 15:53 by-path/
crw-rw-rw-+ 1 freeswitch apache 116, 10 Apr 27 15:53 controlC0
crw-rw-rw-+ 1 freeswitch apache 116, 2 Apr 27 15:53 hwC0D0
crw-rw-rw-+ 1 freeswitch apache 116, 3 Apr 27 15:53 midiC0D0
crw-rw-rw-+ 1 freeswitch apache 116, 9 Apr 27 15:53 pcmC0D0c
crw-rw-rw-+ 1 freeswitch apache 116, 8 Apr 29 00:15 pcmC0D0p
crw-rw-rw-+ 1 freeswitch apache 116, 7 Apr 27 15:53 pcmC0D1c
crw-rw-rw-+ 1 freeswitch apache 116, 6 Apr 27 15:53 pcmC0D2c
crw-rw-rw-+ 1 freeswitch apache 116, 5 Apr 27 15:53 pcmC0D2p
crw-rw-rw-+ 1 freeswitch apache 116, 4 Apr 27 15:53 pcmC0D3p
crw-rw-rw-+ 1 freeswitch apache 116, 1 Apr 27 15:53 seq
crw-rw-rw-+ 1 freeswitch apache 116, 33 Apr 27 15:53 timer

I run freeswitch, so this is why I have the users this way.

[Alan McKinnon]

On 29/04/2013 11:20, Kevin Thompson wrote:
> I had the same issue here when installing pulseaudio. I don't use GNOME,
> so that does take part of the equation away. The problem was solved by
> changing permissions to /dev/snd and it's containing files. After
> chmodding /dev/snd/* to 666, I was able to play sounds as a normal user.
> In the Gentoo guide, it mentions this, and it also mentions taking your
> user out of the audio group if you're currently in it. Please see
> http://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/PulseAudio#Root_can_play_sound.2C_other_users_cannot
> for more detailed information.

Why not rather configure udev to make /dev/snd 660, group owned by
audio, and all human users who need sound are in the audio group?

These 666/777 "solutions" are just bad



--
Alan McKinnon
alan.m...@gmail.com

[Michael Hampicke]

Those devices in there should be owned by root:audio

$ ls -al /dev/snd/
total 0
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 260 Apr 28 20:07 .
drwxr-xr-x 17 root root 4100 Apr 29 12:50 ..
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 60 Apr 28 20:07 by-path
crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 116, 10 Apr 28 20:07 controlC0
crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 116, 2 Apr 28 20:07 hwC0D0
crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 116, 3 Apr 28 20:07 midiC0D0
crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 116, 9 Apr 28 20:24 pcmC0D0c
crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 116, 8 Apr 29 12:51 pcmC0D0p
crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 116, 7 Apr 28 20:07 pcmC0D1c
crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 116, 6 Apr 28 20:07 pcmC0D2c
crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 116, 5 Apr 28 20:11 pcmC0D2p
crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 116, 4 Apr 28 20:07 pcmC0D3p
crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 116, 33 Apr 28 20:07 timer

[cov...@ccs.covici.com]

If I do that than freeswitch does not work properly. I had a lot of
difficulty setting things up and even making them 777 did not work for
some reason, so I made the devices owned the same way as the freeswitch
process.

[Michael Hampicke]

Am 29.04.2013 14:25, schrieb cov...@ccs.covici.com:
> Michael Hampicke <m...@hadt.biz> wrote:
<snip>

>> Those devices in there should be owned by root:audio
>>
>> $ ls -al /dev/snd/
>> total 0
>> drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 260 Apr 28 20:07 .
>> drwxr-xr-x 17 root root 4100 Apr 29 12:50 ..
>> drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 60 Apr 28 20:07 by-path
>> crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 116, 10 Apr 28 20:07 controlC0
>> crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 116, 2 Apr 28 20:07 hwC0D0
>> crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 116, 3 Apr 28 20:07 midiC0D0
>> crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 116, 9 Apr 28 20:24 pcmC0D0c
>> crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 116, 8 Apr 29 12:51 pcmC0D0p
>> crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 116, 7 Apr 28 20:07 pcmC0D1c
>> crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 116, 6 Apr 28 20:07 pcmC0D2c
>> crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 116, 5 Apr 28 20:11 pcmC0D2p
>> crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 116, 4 Apr 28 20:07 pcmC0D3p
>> crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 116, 33 Apr 28 20:07 timer
>
> If I do that than freeswitch does not work properly. I had a lot of
> difficulty setting things up and even making them 777 did not work for
> some reason, so I made the devices owned the same way as the freeswitch
> process.
>

Have you tried adding freeswitch the to audio group?

[cov...@ccs.covici.com]

Yep, its a member to this day, but parts of it did not work that way for
some reason.

[Canek Peláez Valdés]

If you change the permissions in /dev/snd, I don't think PA can work
properly. Could you please set your system to the default setup (doing
a backup of the relevant files)? Leave the permissions of /dev/snd/*
as the kernel sets them, use the original configuration files under
/etc/pulse, and don't use the system-wide PA daemon.

Then log in into the console, try to use an application that uses the
soundcard (preferably something simple, like mplayer), and see if PA
is running. If it is, please paste the output of "pactl list".

If PA it's not running and you get no sound, then the problem is elsewhere.