Bugzilla Bug 199507

Trying to make pulseaudio the default sound server for all the programs that
use sound, i found that gnome esd sounds dont work.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.start a pulseaudio server(i prefer system wide, but user can too): 
pulseaudio --log-level=debug --system

2.select pulseaudio as default esd wrapper (with eselect or linking
/usr/bin/esd to /usr/bin/esdcompat):
#eselect esd list
Available ESounD implementations:
  [1]   ESounD original
  [2]   PulseAudio *
# eselect esd set 2

3.try to play a .wav file with esdplay, e.g. : 
esdplay usr/share/sounds/login.wav


Actual Results:  
output of esdplay /usr/share/sounds/login.wav:
esdplay: pcm_params.c:2351: sndrv_pcm_hw_params: Assertion `err >= 0' failed.
Abortito


Expected Results:  
It should have played sound.

The server itself works great, only gnome sounds cant be played.
Ekerazha reported this bug on the Pulseaudio website (here's the link
http://www.pulseaudio.org/ticket/121 ), i just quote the guy to whom the bug
was assigned:

"Please report this issue to the gentoo bugzilla: if they decided to patch esd
to use a non-standard socket dir, then they should be patching PA the same way
too.

I am closing this bug now as this seems to be a configuration error, and very
likely specific to Gentoo (or Ubuntu)"

Tanke has uploaded a strace: http://the-gay-bar.com/strace_esdplay.txt

Thanks for attention. Be kind to me, it's my first bug submission, feel free to
ask more info if needed.

just a note that esound by itself works perfectly here.
I'll try to see if I can get pulseaudio to work for me but I know that remi got
it working.

@remi, shime in please :)

A couple things :

1) Please look at /usr/portage/<category>/<package>/metadata.xml before
assigning bugs :) it makes everyone's life easier, and bugs will get fixed
faster. Reassigning to sound.

2) I specifically don't use the esd wrapper, in fact I disabled the esd module
in my default.pa. I use gst-plugins-pulse for all gnome applications. As for
system sounds (login, logout, ...) I don't use them. Daniel (dang) recently
patched nautilus and it now uses gstreamer for sound previews. So that should
work without esd.

My advice, try to use native pulseaudio output in your applications whenever
possible.

@sound, this one's for you :)

Thanks for your bug report.

Have you tried using

load-module module-esound-protocol-unix socket="/tmp/.esd/socket"

to start the esound protocol? It's what debian does, and fixed the problem for
me.

Gathering from the debian esound changelog the socket's location has been
bumped around between esound releases, with the most recent change being: 

* esound socket has moved back to /tmp/.esd, to be binary compatible with other
distributions.

The strace the gentoo user posted at the pulseaudio site shows that esdplay is
indeed looking for the socket at /tmp/.esd/socket.

Ubuntu patches esound to use a 'multi-user-friendly' socket dir. See the patch
at http://patches.ubuntu.com/patches/esound.multiuser.diff and the discussion
at debian bug #147532.

To summarise my incoherent babbling: pulseaudio seems to create the esound
socket at /tmp/.esd-${UID}/socket by default. However, esound applications, by
default, expect it to be at /tmp/.esd/socket. This seems to be what causes the
problem.

Ugh, that should be http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=147532.

Also, please let me add that it seems like the pulseaudio dev is mistaken. For
it seems like gentoo *is* in fact using the 'standard' socket dir, just like
debian.

dear Sebastian, i love you! :D
i modified the line in /etc/pulse/default.pa:
load-module module-esound-protocol-unix

in:
load-module module-esound-protocol-unix socket="/tmp/.esd/socket"

as you suggested. 
Then i restarted the pulseaudio boot script.
Now playing a sound with esdplay works as root.
The error:
esdplay: pcm_params.c:2351: sndrv_pcm_hw_params: Assertion `err >= 0' failed.

still happens for non-root users.

I use pulseaudio as a system wide daemon. Maybe i should try in user mode,
shouldn't I? Guess it's a permissions' issue now...

Glad we are getting close to the solution, so sorry if I bother you again but -
I love you :D

My user should be able to connect to esd socket, because:
mimmo@gentoobox ~ $ groups mimmo
wheel audio cdrom video cdrw plugdev pulse-access pulse mimmo

mimmo@gentoobox ~ $ ls -l /tmp/.esd/socket 
srwxrwxrwx 1 pulse pulse 0  4 dic 20:02 /tmp/.esd/socket

but still get the error trying to play a sound on esd wrapper.

mimmo@gentoobox ~ $ esdplay /usr/share/sounds/login.wav 
esdplay: pcm_params.c:2351: sndrv_pcm_hw_params: Assertion `err >= 0' failed.
Abortito

Any ideas?
Thanks for your time and your patience :)

To access esd you seem to need the file .esd_auth from /var/run/pulse in your
home dir. The problem is that that file is -rw-------  1 pulse pulse so you
cannot just symlink it (your user needs to be able to read it)

Sorry for the double post but this:
http://www.pulseaudio.org/wiki/SystemWideInstance is the corresponding website.
The .esd_auth file problem only exists for the system-wide daemon, if it's
started by the user that problem is solved automatically cause the user owns
the .esd_auth file that is then created in his/her ~.

The ebuild warns you about esound and systemwide. But indeed there is a
regression in PulseAudio 0.9.8, I'll take care of it upstream and downstream
now, just need to find a way to call the configure switch.

Fixed on Gentoo, I'll commit upstream after talking with Lennart.

Thx for advices... i just fixed in this way:

$ ln -sf /var/run/pulse/.esd_auth ~/.esd_auth

but i had to make that file readable by user:
# chmod +r /var/run/pulse/.esd_auth

guess this file is created every boot, isnt it?
thanks anyway, now all works perfectly.