[pulseaudio-discuss] Hpw to start the pa server

[Gene Heskett]

On Wednesday 14 April 2010, Colin Guthrie wrote:
>'Twas brillig, and Gene Heskett at 14/04/10 17:30 did gyre and gimble:
>> On Wednesday 14 April 2010, Colin Guthrie wrote:
>>> 'Twas brillig, and Gene Heskett at 14/04/10 16:38 did gyre and gimble:
>>>> On Wednesday 14 April 2010, Colin Guthrie wrote:
>>>>> 'Twas brillig, and Gene Heskett at 13/04/10 01:38 did gyre and gimble:
>>>>>> On Monday 12 April 2010, Colin Guthrie wrote:
>>>>>>> 'Twas brillig, and Gene Heskett at 12/04/10 20:29 did gyre and 
gimble:
>>>>>>>> draksound, re-enabled, was on before by other means, and enabled
>>>>>>>> user switching.  No sound yet.
>>>>>>>> pacmd.ls.out attached.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Hmm, what is strange here is that it shows no streams at all - e.g.
>>>>>>> no sink inputs. To back this up, all the sinks are in a suspended
>>>>>>> state.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> The volumes are all incredibly high - well over the 100% mark. How
>>>>>>> were these volumes set? Most tools only allow volumes up to 150%.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I _think_ it was paprefs that allowed me to go as high as 400%.
>>>>>
>>>>> Ahh no, I think it was likely paman... it's evil :p Generally speaking
>>>>> paman and padevchooser are obsolete... I should probably not ship them
>>>>> really but some people do like them despite their evilness :p
>>>>
>>>> paman runs here, padevchooser doesn't output anything, shows a .4%
>>>> memory usage, and responds to a ctrl+c to quit.
>>>
>>> It's an applet that sits in the system tray and shows popups and a
>>> submenu and stores it's settings in a strange way that conflict with
>>> normal usage. Don't use it :p
>>
>> So thats why the system tray cleaned itself up when I killed the last
>> padevchooser.
>>
>>>>> Can you do the following for me:
>>>>>
>>>>> 1) Enable PA in draksound and reboot.
>>>>> 2) Login.
>>>>> 3) ps aux | grep pulseaudio
>>>>
>>>> [gene at coyote gene]$ ps aux | grep pulseaudio
>>>> root     17772  0.0  0.0 206580  2264 ?        S<sl Apr12   0:00
>>>> /usr/bin/pulseaudio --start --log-target=syslog gene     22513  0.0 
>>>> 0.1 221408  4904 ?        S<sl Apr13   0:13 /usr/bin/pulseaudio --start
>>>> --log-target=syslog gene     28277  0.0  0.0   7372   948 pts/6    R+
>>>> 10:28   0:00 grep --color pulseaudio
>>>
>>> OK, the version running as root is probably cocking things up here. Can
>>> you find out why it was started and kill it if possible? You'll want to
>>> do this before logging in as your own user.
>>
>> Without a reboot, the root session has gone away, didn't change anything
>> though.
>>
>>>>> 4) paplay /usr/share/sounds/ia_ora-startup.wav
>>>>
>>>> Silence, does take a while to get the prompt back
>>>
>>> I suspect the silence is due to the fact that you are now running your
>>> own PA daemon, but the root users own PA daemon is also running, hogging
>>> the sound card and not letting your user access it at the same time.
>>> Running PA as root is a generally bad idea so try to avoid it at all
>>> costs.
>>
>> See above, no root session now exists.
>>
>>>>> 5) (in a separate terminal, leave running and retry until it starts
>>>>> properly): pulseaudio -k; pulseaudio -vvvvv
>>>>
>>>> All I can get, tried 30-40 times, is
>>>> [gene at coyote gene]$ pulseaudio -k; pulseaudio -vvvvv
>>>> I: main.c: setrlimit(RLIMIT_NICE, (31, 31)) failed: Operation not
>>>> permitted
>>>>
>>>> E: pid.c: Daemon already running.
>>>> E: main.c: pa_pid_file_create() failed.
>>>>
>>>> However, executing the above line, does report a connection lost for
>>>> the line below if its been run. Expected...
>>>
>>> Hmm, OK, it seems to autospawn far too quickly for you (machine quicker
>>> than mine :D).
>>
>> 2.1Ghz quad core phenom, 4Gb of dram.
>>
>>>>> 6) paplay /usr/share/sounds/ia_ora-startup.wav
>>>>
>>>> [gene at coyote gene]$ time paplay /usr/share/sounds/ia_ora-startup.wav
>>>> 0.03user 0.00system 0:07.75elapsed 0%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata
>>>> 0maxresident)k 0inputs+0outputs (0major+869minor)pagefaults 0swaps
>>>>
>>>>> 7) cat ~/.pulse/client.conf
>>>>
>>>> [gene at coyote gene]$ cat ./pulse/client.conf
>>>> cat: ./pulse/client.conf: No such file or directory
>>>
>>> You've got a typo. I said "cat ~/.pulse/client.conf" type exactly that.
>>
>> Copy/paste from your line ;)
>> [gene at coyote gene]$ cat ~/.pulse/client.conf
>> cat: /home/gene/.pulse/client.conf: No such file or directory
>> both times. ;)
>>
>>>>> 8) cat /etc/pulse/client.conf
>>>>
>>>> [gene at coyote gene]$ cat /etc/pulse/client.conf
>>>
>>> Cool. That's what I expect it to be. Ticked off the list :)
>>>
>>>>> 9) xprop -root | grep PULSE
>>>>
>>>> [gene at coyote gene]$  xprop -root | grep PULSE
>>>> [gene at coyote gene]$
>>>
>>> Thanks. With a normal clean startup process this should contain
>>> something but running pulseaudio -k or padevchooser can mess it up.
>>> Being empty is good tho' and should still work fine.
>>>
>>>>> 10) env | grep PULSE
>>>>
>>>> [gene at coyote gene]$ env | grep PULSE
>>>> [gene at coyote gene]$
>>>
>>> As above. I didn't expect anything to be here, but worth double
>>> checking.
>>>
>>>> However,
>>>> [root at coyote Daily]# env |grep pulse
>>>> CANBERRA_DRIVER=pulse
>>>> [root at coyote Daily]#
>>>
>>> Yeah that's fine (this is actually one of the reasons that PA is
>>> autospawned so quickly above :D)
>>>
>>>>> Just to keep things simple, I'd load up paprefs and untick the box to
>>>>> create a combined output (it's the last tab IIRC). Then the above sink
>>>>> wont load which keeps our setup cleaner.
>>>>
>>>> Already did, that is the condition for all of the above.
>>>>
>>>> And I just tried the "pulseaudio -k;pulseaudio -vvvvv" about 50 more
>>>> times. Same instantly respawned result every time.  Where do I disable
>>>> the auto-respawn?
>>>
>>> OK, the best bet here is to:
>>> cp /etc/pulse/client.conf ~/.pulse/client.conf
>>>
>>> then edit the latter file and change so "autospawn = no"
>>>
>>> This will allow easier debug :)
>>>
>>>> I just fired up mcc, went to the screen for audio and ran everything
>>>> there, getting the expected results except for the last one:
>>>> [gene at coyote ~]$ /sbin/fuser -v /dev/dsp
>>>> [gene at coyote ~]$
>>>> but at this point I have NDI what that means.
>>>
>>> That's fine, /dev/dsp is a legacy device node and not much should have
>>> it open anyway. 99% of apps use either alsa or pulse directly.
>>>
>>>> Also, doing that while paplay is running is equally uninformative.
>>>> But it seems to me we aren't using, or do not have, a tool that will
>>>> trace the paths being used.
>>>
>>> OK, so ultimately I think the next round of debug relates to that root
>>> process.
>>>
>>> In my previous list of numbered steps can you add:
>>>
>>> -1) Ensure no root PA daemon is started prior to testing. e.g. do a
>>> fresh reboot, login and then do ps aux | grep pulseaudio. If there is a
>>> root process running, just stop right there and let me know. THis is the
>>> problem and *something* is running on your machine as root that is
>>> trying to produce sound... this is a bad thing and needs to be solved.
>>>
>>> 0) If you just have your own user's PA running, then run the steps
>>> again. You can skip #8 tho' :)
>>>
>>> 1) as before
>>> 2)    "
>>> ...)
>>>
>>>
>>> All the best
>>>
>>> Col
>>
>> After turning off autospawn, the screen scrape can be seen at
>> <http://gene.homelinux.net:85/gene/pulseaudio-vvvvv.out>
>> Lots of 'trailing' white space.  Do we have a tool that will trim that?
>
>You can pipe it through "trim", but it's really the terminal that puts
>the spaces in. If your term supports a save backlog feature then it
>should save without the spaces. Or you can just run:
>
>pulseaudio -k; pulseaudio -vvvv 2>&1 | tee pulse.log
>
>Which will save it to pulse.log.
>
>I forgot to ask, but can you now give "pacmd ls" output now that the
>server is running?

That is also pretty verbose & thanks for teaching me about scrollback saving.
See that output at
<http://gene.homelinux.net:85/gene/pacmd-ls.out>

>Oh and I'd recommend you actually clear out the files in ~/.pulse/. Your
>volumes are set really really high and I reckon that when things kick in
>and start working, you'll likely get deafened!
>
>Cheers.
>
>Col
>
I was the one time it worked a month ago, supposedly w/o pulse at the time.  
Kmix had no control over the volumes then.  And yes, it was flattop my puny 
amps loud then. I'd love to hear it now. ;-)

-- 
Cheers, Gene
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