On Fri, Sep 10, 2010 at 10:07:25AM +0100, Colin Guthrie wrote: > Contrary to the comment that pacmd takes no command line options, you > can just give it commands, so there is no need for this complicated > expect script: > > pacmd set-default-source alsa_input.usb-Generic_FREETALK_Everyman_0000000001-00-Everyman.analog-stereo > > Should work fine. You're right. It produces this visual noise, which doesn't look promising: Welcome to PulseAudio! Use "help" for usage information. >>> >>> But it does turn out to have done the job. The man page for pacmd does say: This program takes no command line options. Evidently we're not supposed to RTFM on this one. Also, I've found the right index numbers to use - the ones after /# in the listing of devices. But those shouldn't be used, since in pulgging/unplugging they don't necessarily come up the same. > You mentioned earlier that it's "fragile", but this is entirely expected > behaviour, so I'm not sure that that description is really appropriate. Here's an example of fragility: the pacmd "exit" command doesn't follow the standard *nix convention of "exit" exiting a shell. Instead it means what in a *nix context shoudl be called "kill." So you use it. You discover you've killed the daemon. Well, guess what. The daemon won't start again easily. Trying /etc/init.d/pulseaudio start or just pulseaudio& - neither gets it started. Neither gives a decent error message as to why it fails, either to console or logs. You end up rebooting the system. Okay that works. Maybe this is a problem with Canonical's version of the init.d/pulseaudio script. But there are _lots_ of ways to get the pulseaudio stack into a condition where it pretty much requires a system reboot. That's Windows-ish. *nix programs should be more robust than that. Best, Whit
