Sound Devices on Arch?

Sound Devices on Arch?

[Steve Holmes]

I just installed Arch Linux on my new laptop but I have run into something
I can't seem to figure out.  It seems that speech is working fine but I can't
play any sound files.  Alsa complains that it can't find a device.
Yet, my machine talks fine with Speakup, espeak and the espeakup connector.

When I do a 'aplay -l' I get the following:
aplay: device_list:235: no soundcards found...

Any idea what I could be missing here?

Thanks for the help.

Re: Sound Devices on Arch?

[Chuck Hallenbeck]

Hi Steve,

On Sat, Dec 11, 2010 at 10:33:50AM -0700, Steve Holmes wrote:
> I just installed Arch Linux on my new laptop but I have run into something
> I can't seem to figure out.  It seems that speech is working fine but I can't
> play any sound files.  Alsa complains that it can't find a device.
> Yet, my machine talks fine with Speakup, espeak and the espeakup connector.

I solved a similar problem here by changing permissions on aplay, like
this:

# chmod 4755 /usr/bin/aplay

I had to do the same thing with the beep command. If it's not too
serious a security risk, you might want to try it. It's an easy enough
change to undo if you need to.

Chuck


-- 
The Moon is Waxing Crescent (33% of Full)
      Website: hallenbeck.ftml.net, Jabber ID: chuckh1@jabber.org
                                --------
         You're not an alcoholic unless you go to the meetings.

Re: Sound Devices on Arch?

[Christopher Brannon]

Chuck Hallenbeck <chuckh@ftml.net> writes:

> I solved a similar problem here by changing permissions on aplay, like
> this:
>
> # chmod 4755 /usr/bin/aplay

Hi Chuck and Steve,
That makes your aplay binary setuid root!  There's no need to do that.
Just add your non-root user to the audio group.

-- Chris

Re: Sound Devices on Arch?

[Steve Holmes]

Hi Chuck, Thanks for the idea but better yet, I found the fix which might
be even better.  I forgot to do this first.  I connected my normal user, 
'steve' to the audio group.  Once I did that, not even aplay but espeak 
worked better without the modification of individual permissions. 

Thanks again though; I had discovered during all this that I could do these commands
in root without any problems.  Glad it was this easy.

On Sat, Dec 11, 2010 at 12:42:56PM -0500, Chuck Hallenbeck wrote:
> Hi Steve,
> 
> On Sat, Dec 11, 2010 at 10:33:50AM -0700, Steve Holmes wrote:
> > I just installed Arch Linux on my new laptop but I have run into something
> > I can't seem to figure out.  It seems that speech is working fine but I can't
> > play any sound files.  Alsa complains that it can't find a device.
> > Yet, my machine talks fine with Speakup, espeak and the espeakup connector.
> 
> I solved a similar problem here by changing permissions on aplay, like
> this:
> 
> # chmod 4755 /usr/bin/aplay
> 
> I had to do the same thing with the beep command. If it's not too
> serious a security risk, you might want to try it. It's an easy enough
> change to undo if you need to.
> 
> Chuck
> 
> 
> -- 
> The Moon is Waxing Crescent (33% of Full)
>       Website: hallenbeck.ftml.net, Jabber ID: chuckh1@jabber.org
>                                 --------
>          You're not an alcoholic unless you go to the meetings.
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup

Re: Sound Devices on Arch?

[Steve Holmes]

Yeah, thanks for the reminder.  I jumped on this so quickly I hadn't seen your 
message; I basically forgot to add myself to the audio group.  It had been long
enough since my last arch install, I had forgotten this detail.

Also, I'm pleased to hear that I can play sounds simultaneously while speakup
is running without device contentions.  I didn't think that would be possible 
with these laptops.

On Sat, Dec 11, 2010 at 05:52:09PM +0000, Christopher Brannon wrote:
> Chuck Hallenbeck <chuckh@ftml.net> writes:
> 
> > I solved a similar problem here by changing permissions on aplay, like
> > this:
> >
> > # chmod 4755 /usr/bin/aplay
> 
> Hi Chuck and Steve,
> That makes your aplay binary setuid root!  There's no need to do that.
> Just add your non-root user to the audio group.
> 
> -- Chris
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup

Re: Sound Devices on Arch?

[Chuck Hallenbeck]

Hi Steve and Chris,

That was simple, glad you got it solved.

But my problem was a little different. My non-root user was already in
the audio group, and the instances of aplay that produced that error
were in that user's procmailrc file. I am retrieving my email with
getmail, and delivering it directly to procmail, which has a couple of
recipes that use aplay to generate sounds when certain headers are
encountered. It was a setup that worked fine up until some particular
upgrade, after which it was only those aplays within the procmailrc
that were failing. Using aplay from a command prompt worked fine.  

The beep man page discusses setting that program to run suid, so I used
that technique with aplay. Lo and behold it worked. 

Chuck


On Sat, Dec 11, 2010 at 11:16:34AM -0700, Steve Holmes wrote:
> Hi Chuck, Thanks for the idea but better yet, I found the fix which might
> be even better.  I forgot to do this first.  I connected my normal user, 
> 'steve' to the audio group.  Once I did that, not even aplay but espeak 
> worked better without the modification of individual permissions. 
> 
> Thanks again though; I had discovered during all this that I could do these commands
> in root without any problems.  Glad it was this easy.
> 
> On Sat, Dec 11, 2010 at 12:42:56PM -0500, Chuck Hallenbeck wrote:
> > Hi Steve,
> > 
> > On Sat, Dec 11, 2010 at 10:33:50AM -0700, Steve Holmes wrote:
> > > I just installed Arch Linux on my new laptop but I have run into something
> > > I can't seem to figure out.  It seems that speech is working fine but I can't
> > > play any sound files.  Alsa complains that it can't find a device.
> > > Yet, my machine talks fine with Speakup, espeak and the espeakup connector.
> > 
> > I solved a similar problem here by changing permissions on aplay, like
> > this:
> > 
> > # chmod 4755 /usr/bin/aplay
> > 
> > I had to do the same thing with the beep command. If it's not too
> > serious a security risk, you might want to try it. It's an easy enough
> > change to undo if you need to.
> > 
> > Chuck
> > 
> > 
> > -- 
> > The Moon is Waxing Crescent (33% of Full)
> >       Website: hallenbeck.ftml.net, Jabber ID: chuckh1@jabber.org
> >                                 --------
> >          You're not an alcoholic unless you go to the meetings.
> > _______________________________________________
> > Speakup mailing list
> > Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> > http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup

-- 
The Moon is Waxing Crescent (33% of Full)
      Website: hallenbeck.ftml.net, Jabber ID: chuckh1@jabber.org
                                --------
         You're not an alcoholic unless you go to the meetings.