PulseAudio on FreeBSD

[grahamperrin]

https://github.com/poetaman/arttime/wiki#user-content-unixes understandably suggests paplay as a dependency.

Where PulseAudio is required, it's also commonplace to prevent or avoid use. Typically, configure the client to not automatically spawn a daemon when needed:

autospawn=no

Hint

In this type of environment, before then after temporary use of things such as paplay:

1. pulseaudio --start
2. pulseaudio --kill

Notes

• https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/PulseAudio/
• https://www.freshports.org/audio/pulseaudio/#requiredby in FreshPorts
• pacat(1)
• pulseaudio(1)
• pulse-client.conf(5) – DIRECTIVES include autospawn

FreeBSD bugs:

• 194727 – uaudio device gets disconnected, and hangs usb until everything using /dev/mixer* is closed
• 262713 – audio/pulseaudio: update to 15.0 or greater

% file /usr/local/bin/paplay
/usr/local/bin/paplay: symbolic link to pacat
% pkg provides /usr/local/bin/paplay
Name    : pulseaudio-14.2_4
Comment : Sound server for UNIX
Repo    : FreeBSD
Filename: usr/local/bin/paplay
% pkg rquery %o pulseaudio
audio/pulseaudio
% 

[poetaman]

@grahamperrin Thanks! Is there another more native way to play notification sounds in DE on BSD Unixes then? All of my Linux machines (Arch, Debian, Kali) with Desktop Environments it comes enabled by default or is enabled by default once I install a package for pulseaudio. I never had to or cared about turning it on and off. After all its a daemon, and when its not being invoked its not consuming any CPU time... I see the FreeBSD bug that could restrict a user from using pulseaudio, in that case another method of playing sound could be added as a dependency and used by arttime till pulseaudio issues are fixed in FreeBSD.

Arttime shouldn't silently turn the daemon on and off for the user. Consider this: A user starts arttime, arttime determines that the pulseaudo daemon is not running. Arttime decides to start the daemon for the user with the intent to close it while it exits (given it was the one who started it). Meanwhile the user turns on their music player that also uses pulseaudio daemon. Then in the sequence of events they quit arttime before they want to stop playing music. Arttime will kill the music being played by the user, and annoying the user...

[grahamperrin]

… Arttime shouldn't silently turn the daemon on and off …

True.

---

… Is there another more native way to play notification sounds in DE on BSD Unixes then? …

Spun off to #29 – I can't predict how long it might become …

[grahamperrin]

For clarity: I mean, I agree that (on FreeBSD) arttime should not take the pulseaudio --start … pulseaudio --kill approach.

[poetaman]

@grahamperrin On Linux VM this is what I see: the reasonpaplay is not affected by pulseaudio --start and pulseaudio --kill is that it seems to first start a pulseaudio daemon if it was not already running. Here's a change I made:

• If pulseaudio is installed and running, then use pulse audio.
• Else if pulseaudio is either not installed or not running, use ogg123.

This fixed multiple problems that could have arisen from prior logic for both Linux and FreeBSD:

• If pulseaudio is not already running, we don't accidentally start the daemon. It's unfortunate that paplay implicitly starts pulseaudio daemon and does not document it on its man page.‡
• If pulseaudio daemon is running, prefer paplay over ogg123, as it seems to produce clearer sound on some systems.

‡ Note: This fixes any problem arttime could have caused on Linux/BSD systems that had pulseaudio installed and disabled, because user was using a competing daemon.

Fix went into main 0c2a0cb, pull and give it a try. I'll send an email to pulse audio developers to mention on their man page for paplay that paplay implicitly starts pulseaudio daemon, as if user did pulseaudio --start first.

[grahamperrin]

… Fix went into main 0c2a0cb, pull and give it a try. …

1. pkg delete -f vorbis-tools
2. nano /usr/local/etc/pulse/client.conf
3. autospawn = no
4. save
5. reboot -r
6. bin/arttime
7. tested OK
8. nano /usr/local/etc/pulse/client.conf
9. ; autospawn = no
10. save
11. pkg check -d
12. automated reinstallation of vorbis-tools
13. reboot -r

[poetaman]

@grahamperrin Awesome! If I got it right, it works as desired under all your setup conditions (I did similar testing on Linux side).

Am new to FreeBSD so a question:pkg check -d does sanity check and also reinstalls vorbis-tools? (perhaps because it's a dependency of some other package you have)?

[grahamperrin]

In my case:

% pkg_tree -r vorbis-tools
vorbis-tools-1.4.2_1,3
 \__ cdrtools-2022.09.18
% 

sysutils/pkg_tree

pkg-delete(8)

pkg-check(8)

[poetaman]

Now PipeWire (the supposed drop-in replacement for PulseAudio) is also supported since b4ff7e8. Not sure how it performs on FreeBSD. It is the default on Fedora, and works well there.

[grahamperrin]

Related (but not to arrtime):

• https://gist.github.com/grahamperrin/f741050b2dac26ed79e8a3f1748302e5

– via FreeBSD sleep/wake (suspend/resume): extending rc.suspend to allow detachment of storage devices on USB, and to avoid audio-related issues