Bug 16313

Summary:	audacity finds no audio devices ('host error' too)... alsa?
Product:	Gentoo Linux	Reporter:	mike wakerly <mikew>
Component:	New packages	Assignee:	Gentoo Linux bug wranglers <bug-wranglers>
Status:	RESOLVED INVALID
Severity:	normal
Priority:	High
Version:	unspecified
Hardware:	x86
OS:	Linux
Whiteboard:
Package list:		Runtime testing required:	---

Description mike wakerly 2003-02-24 17:10:56 UTC

using audacity-1.1.1-r1 on a 1.4 system, i've managed to get it compiled but
audacity can't seem to output audio. my system uses alsa and i've verified that
applications that use OSS only worked correctly via the ALSA OSS emulation.

when i try to select an output device in preferences, there are no devices
listed in the popup menu. i have permissions for /dev/dsp. my first thought was
to manually edit ~/.Audacity and add the device manually to the text file. no
luck. (though audacity does preserve the entry, i still can't get sound output.)

also, when i start audacity, i get a small dialog error: "Host error." in
looking around for this error, it seemed to me that it was related to the
PortAudio library. since I didn't have this merged, i emerged it and recompiled.
still no luck. (and i don't think audacity even requires port audio on linux,
although the web site makes it unclear.)

it is unclear if this is an audacity bug, or a gentoo bug, but it's at least an
audacity-on-gentoo issue.. happy to provide more debugging help..

cheers...

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:

Comment 1 mike wakerly 2003-02-24 17:14:44 UTC

emerge info... sorry, forgot it...

Portage 2.0.46-r12 (default-x86-1.4, gcc-3.2.2, glibc-2.3.1-r2)
=================================================================
System uname: 2.4.20-gentoo-r1 i686 Pentium III (Coppermine)
GENTOO_MIRRORS="http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/distributions/gentoo"
CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc /var/qmail/control /usr/kde/2/share/config /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xkb /usr/kde/3.1/share/config /usr/kde/3/share/config /usr/share/config"
CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/gconf /etc/env.d"
PORTDIR="/usr/portage"
DISTDIR="/usr/portage/distfiles"
PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages"
PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/var/tmp"
PORTDIR_OVERLAY=""
USE="x86 oss 3dnow apm cups gif libg++ mikmod mmx mpeg nls pdflib qtmt truetype xmms xv zlib gtkhtml gdbm berkdb slang bonobo svga tcltk guile libwww esd imlib motif opengl X -gnome kde avi crypt encode flash gd gpm gtk imap ipv6 java jikes jpeg mozilla mpg mysql ncurses oggvorbis pam perl png python qt quicktime readline samba scanner sdl spell ssl tcpd xml xml2 tiff cdr dvd ipsec arts maildir alsa"
COMPILER="gcc3"
CHOST="i686-pc-linux-gnu"
CFLAGS="-march=pentium3 -O3 -pipe"
CXXFLAGS="-march=pentium3 -O3 -pipe"
ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="x86"
MAKEOPTS="-j3"
AUTOCLEAN="yes"
SYNC="rsync://rsync.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage"
FEATURES="sandbox ccache"

Comment 2 mike wakerly 2003-02-26 23:49:14 UTC

okay, found the problem. audacity doesn't play nicely when someone else is using /dev/dsp... for me, that was arts. the audacity guys recommend setting 'auto-suspend time' to 5 seconds in the sound control panel. killing arts also fixes this quite neatly.

cheers..

Comment 3 SpanKY gentoo-dev

2003-02-27 00:02:11 UTC

glad it works :)

Comment 4 imbacil 2004-06-16 12:35:22 UTC

Audacity still don't work with ALSA only. Still getting "Error: host error" when
loading audacity and it won't play any sounds at all.

There seems to be a solution here to make it work with Alsa:
http://audacityteam.org/wiki/index.pl?LinuxIssues