how is pulseaudio supposed to work?
Hi,
Fedora 8 was working fine until I reinstalled it (but keeping my home
dir intact). How sound doesn't work on many applications. This is
likely a pulseaudio issue.
Having looked at PulseAudio documentation, I haven't found out "the
big picture", i.e., how it is supposed to work. Should there be a
daemon running or something? Lot of docs also say "pulseaudio is now
default" but I haven't found out where this can be configured i.e.
where you can turn it off again [1] if you don't like it or check that
everything is configured as required.
The error messages from non-working apps give a hint that a daemon
should be running or that permissions are somehow off.
$ xmms *
*** PULSEAUDIO: Unable to connect: Connection refused
** WARNING **: alsa_setup(): Failed to open pcm device (default):
Connection refused
$ mplayer *
....
*** PULSEAUDIO: Unable to connect: Connection refused
[AO_ALSA] Playback open error: Connection refused
Could not open/initialize audio device -> no sound.
Audio: no sound
Video: no video
....
The solution isn't as simple as starting pulseaudio, though:
$ pulseaudio
W: alsa-util.c: Cannot find mixer control "Master".
E: module-alsa-source.c: Error opening PCM device hw:0: No such file
or directory
E: module.c: Failed to load module "module-alsa-source" (argument:
"device=hw:0 source_name=alsa_input.pci_1002_4383_alsa_capture_0"):
initialization failed.
When you background the process and run xmms again, you get:
Message: alsa_setup(): Cannot set mmap'ed mode: Invalid argument.
falling back to direct write
.. and xmms starts playing but there is no sound. No error message on
mplayer, but again there is no sound.
[1] this seems to give a lead though:
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-test-list/2007-October/msg01325.html
--
Pekka Savola "You each name yourselves king, yet the
Netcore Oy kingdom bleeds."
Systems. Networks. Security. -- George R.R. Martin: A Clash of Kings