On Fri, Nov 14, 2014 at 10:29:50AM -0800, Bill Unruh wrote:
> JUst to clarify a bit. pulseaudio sits on top of alsa-- ie it needs alsa (or
> oss) to be running properly in order for it to work. It takes audio streams
> from the programs and mixes them together and sends them off to the alsa
> drivers, etc (at least when it is working properly).
An interesting description. What do the audio streams
consist of? Digital data, for sure; but what kind? I
like "mixes them together". Now I'm not being hostile
here; I'm just pointing out that your discussion of what
is going on lacks specificity.
What I _am_ inferring is that pulseaudio gets the data
in some form, and gives them to ALSA, which is in
charge of the cards, which are attached to the
speakers(through the hole/pin arrangement in the back
of my machine) ALSA formalizes this process through
the "driver" mechanism(everything is a file!) that we
all know, and some of us understand(not I, too
well<g>)
> This means that if, for some reason, alsa is not working
> properly, pulseaudion cannot work. But is pulseaudio is not
> working, then also can still play the music as long as the
> program is set up to send the music to alsa.
Which program? The magic seems to be: whether I get
sound signals from a youtube video, or from a midi
file that my Lilypond has created, or from an oggvorbis
file, or whatever, still sound comes out of my
speakers nicely. Obviously a complicated process.
> On Fri, 14 Nov 2014, Alan McConnell wrote:
>
> > pulseaudio. From my "research"(aka searching helplessly
> > around on the Internet) I discovered that ALSA needs
> > pulseaudio to function. So I ran the command
> > pulseaudio --start
> > and got an error message. "well, that didn't work!"
>
> I am sure that was not the error message.
<LOL> No, it wasn't! Although unfortunately very many
of my thoughts are error messages to myself.
> Had you told us what it was we might have been able to explain
> to you want it was trying to say.
Here it is:
E: [pulseaudio] authkey.c: Failed to truncate cookie file: Invalid argument
W: [pulseaudio] authkey.c: Failed to load authorization key
+'/home/alan/.config/pulse/cookie': Invalid argument
What do you make of it? If you had received such a daunting
message, would you have anticipated that your command
nevertheless went through? For your information: I had
previously created the pulse directory in ~/.config and
had put an empty file, named 'cookie', in it.<G>
> Sound is still one of the areas of Linux which is pretty messed
> up, in part because of the vast vast diversity of sound
> hardware-- there are hundreds of companies out there making
> sound cards, and each thinks they have to compete by making
> their sound card's control more obscure than their
> competitor. pulseaudion was supposed to unify the situation. It
> is fine sometimes but if there is any problem lower down it is
> terrible and hides rather than reveals those problems.
Interesting. In view of the problems I indicated above:
analog/digital, huge number of formats, etc etc, I think
that Linux and ALSA have done an impressive job. Of
course, very intelligent people have been working on
computer sound problems for decades; Wikipedia tells me
that the ALSA project was started in 1998.
> > Alsomixer, also amixer, work fine now. I know I can turn the
> Alsamixer?
It is a nice ncurses program. Don't you have it on your
system, Mr Unruh?
> > work? It is of course no problem to run pulseaudio --start
> > by hand, and I can probably put this command into my
> > .bashrc, but still . . .
>
> You need to have an entry in /etc/rc?.d where the ? refers to the runlevel you
> run at, which starts with S, has two digits (listed at the beginning of the
> init.d/pulseaudio file) and then the name pulseaudio. It is a link to
> /etc/init.d/pulseaudio. Eg, ln -s /etc/init.d/pulseaudio
> /etc/rc3.d/S75pulseaudio
> (I do not know that those are the right numbers for Debian-- I do not use
> Debian)
If this elaborate process is my alternative to putting the
command into my .bashrc, you know which I'll choose!
> > Just for curiosity's sake: what other Linux program
> > could I substitute for pulseaudio? Someday, when I've
> > picked myself up off the floor, I might feel like playing
> > with it. I am a musician, play violin and viola, so
> > the temptation is there.
>
> Jack? Or just the "bare" alsa.
Jack is mentioned in the Wikipedia article on ALSA. My
Debian Wheezy disks seem to have it. Thanks for the
information!
> William G. Unruh | Canadian Institute for| Tel: +1(604)822-3273
> Physics&Astronomy | Advanced Research | Fax: +1(604)822-5324
> UBC, Vancouver,BC | Program in Cosmology | unruh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Canada V6T 1Z1 | and Gravity | www.theory.physics.ubc.ca/
I have visited a friend in your lovely city. Are you a
believer in "dark energy"? I ask as an interested amateur;
my professional training and my career were in mathematics.
Best wishes to all,
Alan
--
Alan McConnell : http://globaltap.com/~alan/
No one minds what Jeffreys says . . it is not more than a week ago
that I heard him speak disrespectfully of the Equator.(Sydney Smith)
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