[pulseaudio-discuss] Reroute audio from /dev/dsp to another sink

[Colin Guthrie]

'Twas brillig, and Chris Joelly at 14/11/09 11:34 did gyre and gimble:
> i am lokking for a possibility to reroute audio which is sent from an
> application to /dev/dsp to another sink, but i can not find the sending
> application within the tool pavucontrol.

If an application is writing to /dev/dsp this means it is using the 
deprecated OSS interface. The app in question should probably be updated 
to use something more modern like the ALSA API (make sure you stick to 
the "Safe API Subset" tho')

In order to ensure this legacy application still works on a modern 
system there are essentially two options:
  1. Start your application through the padsp wrapper app. This will 
intercept the calls the app makes to open /dev/dsp and instead route the 
audio through PulseAudio. Any sensible distro will ensure this is done 
for you in the .desktop files supplied with applications, so starting 
them via the menu should "Just Work". If you distro does not do this for 
your app, then complain to them.

  2. A more modern alternative is to use osspd. This needs a very recent 
kernel (with cuse support) and fuse package. It's probably not work 
going into in detail.

Both of these "hacks" whill hopefully not be required for much longer 
and OSS can fully be put to rest.

Col

-- 

Colin Guthrie
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http://colin.guthr.ie/

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