Pulseaudio and Firefox

deltamalloc · Apprentice Joined: 18 Jan 2013 Posts: 279

After a world update I now find myself facing the error "To play audio, you may need to install the required PulseAudio software." in Firefox.

I simply use ALSA, why does Firefox suddenly want to use PulseAudio? Why did PulseAudio suddenly get pulled in at all when I have -pulseaudio in my global USE flags? I've since removed it again, but I'm still curious how it got pulled in.

How do I get rid of this and just run a proper system without PulseAudio?

Zucca · Posted: Mon May 22, 2017 10:06 pm Post subject:

You may have hard time... I will too, since I will eventually use JACK. And I'm not gonna mix PulseAudio into that.

However. There's already some talk about apulse in this topic.
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Ant P. · Watchman Joined: 18 Apr 2009 Posts: 6920

Jaglover · Posted: Tue May 23, 2017 12:33 pm Post subject:

53 is PA free here, sound works. It may not stay this way, though. Mozilla developers announced they will not work on ALSA code and if it breaks in the future they won't fix it. Why your FF requires PA is mystery for me.
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Zucca · Posted: Tue May 23, 2017 5:04 pm Post subject:

I wonder why Mozilla devs prefer PA over ALSA? I mean... just by supporting ALSA, PA users (like I) can still use Firefox without problems.

Eventually I need to change to JACK, I think. I have MIDI-keyboard waiting to be used. But I read that JACK can only use one sound card at the time... That's a dealbreaker. :(
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Hu · Moderator Joined: 06 Mar 2007 Posts: 21602

If I recall correctly, they have some unspecified enhancements planned that they want to write only once and they believe that the enhancements will require backend-specific code, so they must choose whether to write to ALSA or write to PulseAudio. They believe, whether or not correctly, that PulseAudio users are a vast majority and that freezing out ALSA users while supporting PulseAudio users will enjoy a larger userbase than the reverse. I find this logic questionable, but have mostly ignored the issue since I believe web browsers should be seen and not heard. Videos should be played by software written for that purpose, not shoe-horned into a browser.

figueroa · Posted: Thu May 25, 2017 4:24 pm Post subject:

I globally set -pulseaudio use in make.conf. Removed firefox-bin and emerged firefox-52.1.0-r1 (stable arch x86) in 46 minutes. Sound works.

I'm satisified for now, but concerned about dependency creep in the future.
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amd64/23.0/split-usr/desktop (stable), OpenRC, -systemd -pulseaudio -uefi

figueroa · Posted: Thu May 25, 2017 4:27 pm Post subject:

Moriah · Posted: Mon May 29, 2017 10:12 pm Post subject:

I too lost sound in firefox-bin after a routine update. I followed the suggestion above and removed firefox-bin and installed firefox from source. Samne version as above, but still no sound in firfox. I can play *.mp3 files with mgp123 just fine, so it is specifically a firefox issue.

Does anybody have any ideas what is wrong? And no, I really don't want pulseaudio. :evil:

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Moriah · Posted: Mon May 29, 2017 10:39 pm Post subject:

CORRECTION:

My alsa sound works with mpg123 from user root, but not from a normal user. I just checked, and it works with firefox as root also.

When I was fiddling with pulseaudio, I followed the instructions in the gentoo wiki to take all users out of the audio group in /etc/group, but I put them back, and it doesn't help.

What is going on here?
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Hu · Moderator Joined: 06 Mar 2007 Posts: 21602

When you put them back, did you also log out and back in so that the new group information is made active? What is the output of id from a shell where mpg123 fails?

Moriah · Posted: Mon May 29, 2017 11:58 pm Post subject:

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Tue May 30, 2017 9:03 am Post subject:

robdd · Posted: Tue May 30, 2017 11:22 am Post subject:

Nice to see I'm not the only one unpleasantly surprised to find that upgrading firefox-bin meant introducing that pulseaudio rubb^H^H^H^Hstuff. In fact, I'm getting a bit tired of the big distributions forcing solutions on me for problems I don't have. I came back to Gentoo after flirting with Linux Mint because they were (as a derivative of Ubuntu) adopting systemd. BTW, there's a cracker of a "Downfall parody" about systemd at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cdEFF-ttLw.

And don't get me started on Grub-2. Recently I was re-purposing an old rack-mounted Dell as a file server. Because it's old and the hardware is a bit weird I cocked up the grub install - then I can't even try to boot from the command line because the video drivers weren't loading. Video drivers to boot a kernel FFS!!!! I don't want a pretty splash screen and a mindless bar moving from side to side - I just want to bloody well boot a kernel! And whoever thought that having conditional parsing in grub.conf was a good idea needs to be shot. I'm not a parser FFS, that's what the COMPUTER is for! Now every Linux machine I control boots with good old Lilo. But I digress...

So I will try installing firefox from source, and if that doesn't work I'll use Chrome until I can find another browser that doesn't tattle to Google about everything I'm doing. I'm already worried that the initial install of the new firefox-bin/pulseaudio damaged my Alsa set-up, but I'd rather fix that than have some complicated piece of kit that does heaps of things that I'll never need infesting (infecting??) my machine.
</rant>
Regards to all.. Rob.
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saturnalia0 · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 13 Oct 2016 Posts: 134

Killing XUL and now this... Any decent forks out there? I never liked Mozilla anyway.

saturnalia0 · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 13 Oct 2016 Posts: 134

The other thread is 3 pages and this is about to become 2. I read the other one until it devolved into a discussion about GTK and I still don't know what I should do. apulse only works with www-client/firefox-bin but I can also emerge www-client/firefox instead and keep my ALSA only system? And what was the talk about 53 working with ALSA but 52 not? Future development? Anyway, a fixed thread with the main points could avoid more discussion and clear things up for lurkers and people coming from Google.

Hu · Moderator Joined: 06 Mar 2007 Posts: 21602

Firefox 52 ESR can be installed on a system with no PulseAudio and can play sound on such a system. I cannot comment on whether that will continue to work on Firefox 53 and later.

Moriah · Posted: Thu Jun 01, 2017 2:19 am Post subject:

And I did emerge firefox romk source and it only plays audio if I run it as root, which is not a very good idea. :evil:

Any ideas what is wrong? I posted above, but others posted other stuff afterwards, and my probem got burried.

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The Doctor · Moderator Joined: 27 Jul 2010 Posts: 2678

Hu · Moderator Joined: 06 Mar 2007 Posts: 21602

Moriah: since mpg123 fails for you as a normal user, I suspect your problem is that ALSA is nonfunctional for your normal user, regardless of the program using it (Firefox, mpg123, vlc, etc.). This may be a separate problem from the users who are dealing with the PulseAudio vs ALSA problems. You may have better luck pursuing a separate thread focused purely on the problem that your normal user generates no audio output when using ALSA (despite that, as you noted above, it consumes the right amount of time).

Based on your results so far, I think we can rule out permissions, since most audio players exit immediately on failure to open due to permissions (and usually produce more pointed error messages). We can rule out a muted output channel, since muting is per-channel, not per-user, so a muted channel would have silenced root, and you report that root is not silenced.

As a blind guess, do you have any per-user ALSA settings (e.g. .asoundrc) that might be routing the sound incorrectly?

Princess Nell · l33t Joined: 15 Apr 2005 Posts: 916

Even better: de-googled chromium from pg_overlay.

Punchcutter · Guru Joined: 11 Feb 2007 Posts: 354

Will probably use Chromium for anything that needs audio "from now on".

I do note something interesting though.... I've got FF ESR 52.1.0 here, and as expected, it doesn't play sound for stuff on Youtube, however I can watch videos on www.pbs.org/newshour , and there's sound! At least, not the videos that are hosted by YT. Newshour offers its own local player (not sure what it is, exactly, except that it seems to stream Flash), and some of the news stories come through this player. These stories have sound, even on 52. I wonder why that is. I've read that FF ESR doesn't have the same requirement of PA as other versions and sound should still work, but then... why is mine not playing YT videos.... ?

Ant P. · Watchman Joined: 18 Apr 2009 Posts: 6920

Youtube videos don't use flash any more.

saturnalia0 · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 13 Oct 2016 Posts: 134

apulse doesn't work at all for me

MaDDeePee · Guru Joined: 18 Aug 2004 Posts: 387 Location: Germany

why can't i emerge apulse together with firefox-bin?