Re: pulseaudio == disaster ??

["Kelly Miller" <lightsolphoenix@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Nov 13, 2007 2:56 PM, David A. De Graaf <dad@xxxxxxxx> wrote:

1 - Apparently pulseaudio is a daemon that must be running all the
time, just to produce the simplest sound.

And in that respect it is no different than arts, esd, and a bunch of other such systems.  If you want to run directly on ALSA, you can just turn PulseAudio off.

2 - Sounds work only while running gnome, because only gnome
knows how to start the daemon.  I don't use gnome; I use XFCE4.
Why would starting this sound daemon be assigned to a window manager,
of all things?
What perverted software architect makes using the sound system
dependent on a window manager - any window manager?

Uh, it's not.  I got PulseAudio to start automatically on XFCE4 using Autostarted Applications.  It really isn't that hard.

3 - There are no man pages.  There are 15 packages named "*pulse*" -
and not a single man page.

pulseaudio --help ;)

5 - The http://www.pulseaudio.org/ web page is a paean to the wonders of
this new system, but has precious little instruction on how to
actually make it work.  The topic "Command Line Interface" seems to
address this issue, listing many commands that can be used in
configuration scripts.  At the end is an example:

Example Configuration Script

Mark the following script as executable (chmod +x) and run it for a
sensible PulseAudio configuration.

   #!/usr/bin/pulseaudio -nF

   # Create autoload entries for the device drivers
   add-autoload-sink output module-alsa-sink device=plughw:0,0 rate=48000 sink_name=output
   add-autoload-sink output2 module-oss device=/dev/dsp1 record=0 sink_name=output2
   add-autoload-sink combined module-combine master=output slaves=output2 sink_name=combined

       < remaining commands snipped >

Clearly, this instruction is not to be taken literally;  the script
contains commands that do not exist in Linux.

Rather, I assume the script is meant to replace /etc/pulse/default.pa,
which is purportedly used to configure a starting pulseaudio daemon,
so I tried that, and ran
   pulseaudio --system --log-target=syslog
expecting to have the daemon initialized and to hear 'startup3.wav'.

Instead, /var/log/messages receives a list of error messages, eg

 Nov 13 13:32:18 datbird pulseaudio[2693]: module-alsa-sink.c: Error
   opening PCM device plughw:0,0: No such device
 Nov 13 13:32:18 datbird pulseaudio[2693]: module.c: Failed to load
   module "module-alsa-sink" (argument: "device=plughw:0,0 rate=48000
   sink_name=output"): initialization failed.
 Nov 13 13:32:18 datbird pulseaudio[2693]: module-combine.c: Invalid
   master sink 'output'
 Nov 13 13:32:18 datbird pulseaudio[2693]: module.c: Failed to load
   module "module-combine" (argument: "master=output slaves=output2
   sink_name=combined"): initialization failed.

First of all, I've noticed that using --system ALWAYS throws the "Error opening PCM device" error, so don't use it.  I had the same error you're getting, and fixed it by using module hal-detect to get the system to find the ALSA objects.  I'll post my config file here when I get home and can look at it.

Clearly. I'm missing some important info.
What is a "PCM device plughw:0,0", and why don't I have one???

The PCM device is listed in ALSA; it's usually hw:0 by default.  Again, use module hal-detect and the system will find the entries for you.

Sorry, but I think pulseaudio isn't ready for prime time, yet.

Your opinion.  I've got it working 100% on two Fedora systems and an openSUSE system, and it works fantastic.

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