pulseaudio == disaster ??

[Kelly Miller]

David A. De Graaf wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 14, 2007 at 08:39:04AM -0500, Kelly Miller wrote:
>   
>> On Nov 13, 2007 2:56 PM, David A. De Graaf <dad at datix.us> wrote:
>>
>>                I got PulseAudio to start automatically on XFCE4 using
>> Autostarted Applications.  It really isn't that hard.
>>     
>
> It's hard for me.  Please tell us how.  But first read below.
>   
I went into "Autostarted Applications" (check out the Settings menu) and 
entered the following command, calling the entry "PulseAudio":

pulseaudio --use-pid-file=false -D

(If someone asks me "Why turn off the pid file?", I noticed that 
sometimes the system has trouble removing the pid file, and then 
PulseAudio won't start the next startup)

I also entered padevchooser in Autostarted Applications, so the 
configuration program starts in the tray on startup.
>   
>> 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.
>>     
>
> Please, do.  Please be precise how you use module hal-detect.
>   
Okay; check out the file /etc/pulse/default.pa .  About 20 lines down or 
so, you'll come across this:

### Load audio drivers statically (it's probably better to not load

### these drivers manually, but instead use module-hal-detect --

### see below -- for doing this automatically)

#load-module module-alsa-sink

#load-module module-alsa-source device=hw:1,0

#load-module module-oss device="/dev/dsp" sink_name=output source_name=input

#load-module module-oss-mmap device="/dev/dsp" sink_name=output source_name=input

#load-module module-null-sink

#load-module module-pipe-sink


Just below that, the file should look like this:

### Automatically load driver modules depending on the hardware available
.ifexists /usr/lib/pulse-0.9/modules//module-hal-detect.so
load-module module-hal-detect
.else
### Alternatively use the static hardware detection module (for systems that
### lack HAL support)
load-module module-detect
.endif


It might already be in the config file, so you'll have to see (because 
if it's listed multiple times, the system will error out).

I'll attach my whole configuration file to this email as well.

Another thing you really want to do is make sure that nothing that uses 
the sound system starts before PulseAudio does.  In fact, since I run 
PulseAudio under KDE, I put a kill command into my startup script to 
kill aRts before PulseAudio starts, so I don't have to worry about aRts 
blocking access to the hardware device.  If anything using sound locks 
the hardware device (aRts, ESound, SDL, maybe Xine...), PulseAudio will 
give you the mentioned error.
>> 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.
>>     
>
> I haven't found it yet.
>   
/etc/alsa/alsa.conf

Go down past all the default entries until you see something like this:

pcm.(something) {
    (bunch of text here)
}

The command you want is the text where I put (something).  The final 
result is USUALLY (something):0.
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