Bug 283371 - Make pulseaudio aware of ALSA mixing by default
Summary: Make pulseaudio aware of ALSA mixing by default
Keywords:
Status: CLOSED RAWHIDE
Alias: None
Product: Fedora
Classification: Fedora
Component: pulseaudio
Version: rawhide
Hardware: x86_64
OS: Linux
medium
low
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Lennart Poettering
QA Contact: Fedora Extras Quality Assurance
URL:
Whiteboard:
Depends On:
Blocks:
TreeView+ depends on / blocked
 
Reported: 2007-09-08 01:48 UTC by Valdis Kletnieks
Modified: 2007-11-30 22:12 UTC (History)
2 users (show)

Fixed In Version:
Doc Type: Bug Fix
Doc Text:
Clone Of:
Environment:
Last Closed: 2007-09-24 00:26:55 UTC
Type: ---
Embargoed:


Attachments (Terms of Use)

Description Valdis Kletnieks 2007-09-08 01:48:14 UTC
Description of problem:
If another program is using the ALSA interface, and something tries to emit a
sound via the pulseaudio 'esd' drop-in, it throws messages like this:

E: module-alsa-sink.c: Error opening PCM device hw:0: Device or resource busy

Eventually, something overflows, and we start seeing this instead:

W: sink-input.c: Failed to create sink input: too many inputs per sink.


Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
pulseaudio-esound-compat-0.9.7-0.11.svn20070907.fc8

How reproducible:
Launch an xmms that's using the ALSA output plugin, and then try to output sound
via pulseaudio.

Steps to Reproduce:
1.
2.
3.
  
Actual results:


Expected results:


Additional info:
This worked just fine under esound, so it's a pretty big regression.

Comment 1 Lennart Poettering 2007-09-12 16:57:25 UTC
PulseAudio is not intended to be run through dmix. If alsa-plugins-pulse is
installed ALSA output goes through PA properly which is the way it should be. On
new installations this package is installed by default. I am not sure how we
could make sure that this package is installed on upgrades too.



Comment 2 Valdis Kletnieks 2007-09-12 17:44:42 UTC
Umm, stick a 'Requires: alsa-plugins-pulse' in the .spec?

Comment 3 Valdis Kletnieks 2007-09-12 17:53:15 UTC
Boo, hiss. That won't be sufficient, I just found/read
/usr/share/doc/alsa-plugins-pulseaudio-1.0.14/README-pulse

Comment 4 Valdis Kletnieks 2007-09-14 14:38:32 UTC
xmms's libALSA.so, if pointed at 'pulse' as the device, throws *lots* of
underruns (we're talking several a second).  It makes it *totally* unlistenable.
Click-click-click-click-click.

That's even *with* 'chrt -r 5 /usr/bin/pulseaudio'.

Oh, and having to start *every* program with 'pulse' as recommended in
README-pulse is a Bad Idea - you miss one program and *everything* using Pulse
wedges up and produces no sound.

This is not ready for prime time, by a long shot.

Comment 5 John Ellson 2007-09-15 21:23:06 UTC
Is this what broke nearly all my sound about two weeks ago???   (All except
tvtime for some reason)    See: BZ#281711

I agree with the previous comment.   Anything that causes a regression like this
is not ready for prime time.

Comment 6 Lennart Poettering 2007-09-24 00:26:55 UTC
More recent versions of the ALSA plugin install themselves as "default" in ALSA now.

The ALSA plugin in 1.0.14-3 should improve compatibility with the apps currently
getting underruns when using it.


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