Skype and Google-Talkplugin don't start, may be audio/video config problem

[Mario Storti]

On Mon, Nov 14, 2011 at 12:27 AM, Marko Vojinovic <vvmarko at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sunday 13 November 2011 23:40:59 Mario Storti wrote:
>> On Sun, Nov 13, 2011 at 7:59 PM, Marko Vojinovic <vvmarko at gmail.com> wrote:
>> > On Sunday 13 November 2011 16:06:47 Mario Storti wrote:
>> >> The only conflict that I note is that when I start a video on YouTube
>> >> I can't hear at the sometime music from Amarok for instance. (It's
>> >> probably useless anyway, but I report this because normally I could to
>> >> that before all this problem started).
>> >
>> > This is *not* proper behavior. Pulseaudio should mix audio signals from
>> > all sources. You *are* using pulseaudio, right?
>>
>> Well, I'm very confused with all the audio stuff: ALSA, PulseAudio,
>> Phonon, etc...
>
> It's quite simple, actually. The graphics chain goes like this:
>
> some app (that wants to display a window) talks to:
> kwin (the window manager) which talks to:
> X11 (the graphics server) which talks to:
> intel/radeon/nouveau kernel module (the hardware dirver) which talks to:
> graphics hardware.
>
> In complete analogy, the sound chain goes like this:
>
> some app (which wants to play sound) talks to:
> phonon (the sound manager) which talks to:
> pulseaudio (the sound server) which talks to:
> ALSA (the hardware driver) which talks to:
> audio hardware.
>
>> If I go to "System Settings -> Multimedia -> Phonon" I see only one
>> device "Internal Audio Analog Stereo". I think that that means that
>> Pulseaudio is OK, right? If I click on `test' I heard correctly the
>> sound. If I try to configure the audio through Amarok I get the same.
>
> You can check if pulseaudio is working by playing something in, say, Amarok
> and running top in the console --- pulseaudio should be doing something.
> Alternatively type "ps aux | grep pulseaudio" in the terminal. If it's there,
> you'll see it.
>
> Also, it should be enabled by default, so if you didn't disable it on purpose,
> it should be there.
>
>> BUT, if I have Amarok running, then I have no sound in Firefox, and
>> viceversa, if I have Firefox with a video running, then if I launch
>> Amarok the audio is stopped, and no audio comes from Amarok, only from
>> Firefox.
>
> Both firefox (I guess you actually mean flash-player) and Amarok should be
> configured to use pulseaudio for this to work properly. This is basically
> configured by default, unless you have some weird config inherited from the
> previous Fedora.
>
> I am not sure why it doesn't work for you. Maybe it is something weird related
> to flash player or whatever. If everything else works and if you can live with
> it, leave it be (until you decide to do a clean install sometime in the
> future...).


I had to add a ~/.asoundrc with the following contents:

pcm.pulse {
type pulse
}

ctl.pulse {
type pulse
}

pcm.!default {
type pulse
}

ctl.!default {
type pulse
}

If I understand well that means that the default is Pulseaudio for all
applications. Now I can have Firefox and Amarok playing sound at the
same time. I'm not sure why I need this, I read somewhere that
the .asoundrc file is not really needed except if you have special
hardware (my laptop is Dell Inspiron 1420, rather standard I think).

>> Thanks a lot for your time. I think that I'm closer now, if I can get
>> the audio correctly in the alternate user (mstorti2) then I will
>> switch all my stuff to it, and I think almost all my problems are
>> solved.
>
> Well, I guess that's probably the easiest way to solve (actually, work around)
> the problem. :-)

Now I'm looking for the problem of not being able to run Skype and
Google-Talk plugin. In the home of `mstorti2' I have several config
directories and files, I think that the relevant ones will be the
following (listed in order from more relevant to less relevant,
approximately):

.kde
.config
.dbus
.pulse
.macromedia
.adobe
.gconf
.gconfd
.gnome2
.gnome2_private
.gstreamer-0.10
.xine
.local
.mozilla
.pulse-cookie

I will try to rename this files (in `mstorti') and see if it does
something or not.

Regards, Mario

-------------------------
Mario Alberto Storti     [cel. +54-342-5122135]
CIMEC (INTEC/CONICET-UNL)
Predio CONICET-Santa Fe
Colect. Ruta Nac. 168 Km 472, Paraje El Pozo
3000 Santa Fe, Argentina
Tel: +54-342-4511594 (ext 1015), Tel/Fax: +54-342-4511169
Home: +54-342-4550193, e-mail: mario.storti at gmail.com
http://www.cimec.org.ar/mstorti
-------------------------