[pulseaudio-discuss] Pulseaudio server for playing 32-bit chroot sounds on 64-bit host machine

[Colin Guthrie]

'Twas brillig, and Ng Oon-Ee at 23/04/09 02:54 did gyre and gimble:
> Hi all, first post here but I've been following the list for quite a while.
> 
> Been shifting to a 64-bit setup in Arch Linux, previously used it for a 
> while in Ubuntu with a multi-lib system but went back to 32-bit for a 
> variety of reasons, chiefly work-related. Now willing to try 64-bit 
> again, but with non-64 bit apps safely tucked away in a 32-bit chroot 
> instead of messing around with /lib32 stuff again.
> 
> However, I'm not sure how to get PA to accept sounds from my 32-bit 
> chroot. The only help I've been able to find from this mailing list's 
> archives are a question and quick answer 
> <http://www.mail-archive.com/pulseaudio-discuss@mail.0pointer.de/msg00141.html> 
> concerning permissions on /dev/shm, which are correct as referred to 
> there. In the Arch Linux forums, this thread 
> <http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=540619> contains a 
> discussion on this, but without any clear statements on how the OP 
> actually got his system to work. I've done the most obvious thing, which 
> is to install 32-bit pulse in the chroot, but am unclear about what to 
> do beyond that. Further advise in that thread refers to pulse over a 
> network, and I'm not sure whether that's required, since its within the 
> same machine, after all.
> 
> Thanks to any who can give me pointers in this matter. Some miscellenous 
> (sp?) things I noticed, when I try to run pulseaudio from the chroot I 
> get errors with lots of things not being able to startup, which only go 
> away on removing them from /etc/pulse/default.pa, these are:-
> module-device-restore
> module-stream-restore
> module-card-restore
> module-hal-detect
> module-bluetooth-discover
> module-{esound,native}-protocol-unix
> module-gconf
> The rest load up, leaving me with with module-default-device-restore, 
> module-rescue-streams, module-null-sink, and module-always-sink only.
> 
> Also, when I run pulseaudio in the chroot, I notice /tmp contains two 
> folders named pulse-XXXXXXXX, so I'm guessing that the pulseaudio daemon 
> in the chroot doesn't know that there's already a daemon running and is 
> trying to take control of system devices, hence why I have to disable so 
> many modules since its failure to grab what pulseaudio (64bit) has 
> already taken causes errors.
> 
> Thank you all for your time.

Well, firstly, I'm not sure why you're using a chroot... I've been 
running 64 bit mandriva for several years and it's quite simple to 
install 32bit apps and libraries under a 64 bit system (the library 
packages never conflict between 32/64 systems). I've got several 32 bit 
sound producing apps and they all work fine.

Regardless of that, if you are using a chroot, you don't need a "server" 
as per your subject, you just need the 32 bit pulse libraries. If you 
want alsa applications to work you'll need the 32 bit alsa libraries and 
the 32 bit alsa pulse plugin.

As you said earlier you'll want to make the /dev/shm stuff work on your 
chroot to get best performance.

Remember that you do not want to run a second instance of the pulseaudio 
deamon. There should only be one of these for your user, and it may as 
well be the 64 bit one.

Col

-- 

Colin Guthrie
gmane(at)colin.guthr.ie
http://colin.guthr.ie/

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