LinuxQuestions.org - excuse rambling my notes about: sudden sound gremlins, ridding pulse, restoring audio "just works" sanity.

stldr: sound broke, interim workaround "mpv --ao=sndio" while uninstalled pulse, rebooted, sound seems to work.

UPDATE: tldr: something broke sound, told mpv to use sndio as a workaround while uninstalling pulse, rebooted, stopped telling mpv to use sndio, and... seems to be working ok again. next level, will not only merely uninstall, but will block, pulseaudio. i dont see that i have a need for it, and it seems to give me more trouble than its worth.

feeling the need to keep track of this somewhere... idk if there's a question yet [(or if strictly bedrock related ~ but since it's on bedrock... )]... we'll see how well all this goes. think it will go well?

sound gremlins have suddenly crept in from... somewhere.

so... skipping rest of the long hunt-&-mend adventure-story so far, [tldr:]i'm up to "just remove pulseaudio" after some mild table-flipping, and making do with telling mpv to

Code:

mpv --ao=sndio

to avert whatever was blocking audio (i wanna blame pulse, but idk, there's probably a simpler mend yet ~ or even scrap some strata and start them from scratch to avoid the pebkac jank i've introduced, heh.).

[edit as reported/grumbled last night ##bedrock-chat :

Quote:

[2020-10-12 22:33:08] * Digit grumbles about sound issues again, having deleted (mv'd) configs and killed pulse, can at least get aplay or speaker-test to make noise, but mpv, back to "Audio: no audio", and pulse glomping the sound system silent again...
[2020-10-12 22:33:36] * Digit leaves these actions here as a reminder where upto, when parted for r&r to de-stress
[2020-10-12 22:39:32] * Digit tells mpv to ao=sndio and there was much rejoicing.

/edit]

so on with...

Code:

 pmm list --installed | grep pulse

* strat -r void xbps-query -l | awk '$1 == "ii" {sub(/-[0-9.]+_[0-9]+$/, "", $2); print $2}'

void:xbps      alsa-plugins-pulseaudio

void:xbps      libpulseaudio

void:xbps      pulseaudio

* strat -r gentoo qlist -IC

* strat -r diguan dpkg -l | awk '$1 == "ii" {sub(/:[0-9]+$/,"",$2); print $2}'

diguan:apt      gstreamer1.0-pulseaudio:amd64

diguan:apt      libpulse-dev:amd64

diguan:apt      libpulse-mainloop-glib0:amd64

diguan:apt      libpulse0:amd64

* strat -r aurtix yay -Q | cut -d' ' -f1

aurtix:yay      libpulse

aurtix:yay      pulseaudio

aurtix:yay      pulseaudio-alsa

* strat -r bubunbu dpkg -l | awk '$1 == "ii" {sub(/:[0-9]+$/,"",$2); print $2}'

so those packages will be ridden (even tho i think at least a couple of them might just be compatibility thingies), and making sure the alsa things are installed (and some extra alsa things to be sure, and some packages that just took my eye from searches (like cava and xava))...

Code:

sudo pacman -Rs pulseaudio pulseaudio-alsa libpulse ; sudo pacman -S alsa-utils alsa-plugins alsa-oss

Code:

sudo xbps-remove alsa-plugins-pulseaudio libpulseaudio pulseaudio ; sudo xbps-install AlsaMixer.app alsa-firmware alsa-plugins alsa-sndio alsa-plugins-samplerate alsa-plugins-jack alsa-tools xava

Code:

sudo apt-get remove gstreamer1.0-pulseaudio libpulse-dev libpulse-mainloop-glib0 libpulse0 ; strat freshuan sudo apt-get install alsa-oss alsa-tools alsa-tools-gui alsamixergui alsa-utils alsaplayer-alsa alsaplayer-common alsaplayer-gtk alsaplayer-jack alsaplayer-oss cava oss-compat

[[[ (freshuan (a devuan ceres stratum) gave some errors, had me update and re-run the install command, it went through but still with some errors e.g.:

Code:

E: Could not open file /var/cache/apt/archives/gcc-10-base_10.2.0-15_amd64.deb - open (2: No such file or directory)

E: Internal error, could not locate member control.tar.{zstlz4gzxzbz2lzma}

a whole bundle of them, and preselectings probably automended that. but i dont think it important for proceeding here anyway.
) ]]]

oh, and cava and xava both ask to check if pulseaudio is running. n_n that's what i get for curiosity-installs. maybe they'll be fine without it, once i'm thoroughly settled into this process of ridding pulseaudio to see what that's like these days. ~ a lot of the tips i'm finding on this (spanning a few dozen tabs) are back from like 2011. ... anyways, onwards... ... i'll likely report back with updates after testing more sound things, and possibly a reboot or two too (and/or even after that appealing bedrocky idea of scrap n restart some strata, rearrange which... maybe just barebones it back to just void and carbs, mmm). or i might forget about this entirely with audio "just work"ing. heh, i doubt it (expecting mmmuch pulse dependence these days (~ another reason sending me itching towards more sucklessness).

[and, scruffily/hastily, just before posting (and adding colours while proofreading, lol), speakertest fails (resource busy), i check fuser -vf /dev/snd* and see many pulses still... pkill pulseaudio, fuser check again still 2 mpv and 2 alsamixers, but no new sound not even in speakertest, but the still running mpv's still making sound (good, can still wim hof a few more rounds before rebooting)... (and searched hastily just now skimming for what's this dejavu about ... no sign of my prior posts about sound/pulse)... so that'll do for now. bbl after reboot probably, to update and tidy this up.]