how is pulseaudio supposed to work?

Pekka Savola pekkas at netcore.fi
Thu Dec 13 19:42:29 UTC 2007


I guess I'm having a couple of problems..

On Thu, 13 Dec 2007, Will Woods wrote:
> 1) /etc/alsa/pulse-default.conf makes pcm.pulse the default ALSA device.
> - This file is provided by alsa-plugins-pulseaudio.

This is OK.

> 2) When you log in through gdm/kdm, HAL grants you read/write access to
> the ALSA device nodes.
> - This is handled by ConsoleKit, but wdm/xdm don't support it properly.
> - Strictly speaking this has nothing to do with PulseAudio.

I'm using gdm (default config), but /dev/dsp, /dev/audio and don't 
give me perms, I guess this is a problem:

crw-rw----+ 1 root root 14, 3 2007-12-12 20:14 /dev/dsp

> 3) When GNOME/KDE/etc start up, they start pulseaudio.
> - Actually, GNOME starts ESD, but /usr/bin/esd -> esdcompat
> - esdcompat is provided by pulseaudio-esound-compat
> - kde-settings-pulseaudio provides /etc/kde/env/pulseaudio.sh

Right -- I''m using XFCE so I think I'm hosed.

I guess  in the xfce rpms should start up something like this in their 
init scripts (but don't).

I wonder if there could have been some Conflicts: or other magic in 
the RPMs that would prevent making pulseaudio default if the user has 
a setup which is known not to work.

-- 
Pekka Savola                 "You each name yourselves king, yet the
Netcore Oy                    kingdom bleeds."
Systems. Networks. Security. -- George R.R. Martin: A Clash of Kings




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