On Fri, 25 Sep 2020 22:54:14 -0700
Marc Shapiro via Dng <dng@???> wrote:

> I have been running Debian for over 20 years, but I want to avoid
> systemd, so I am trying out Devuan.

Excellent!

>
> I installed ASCII a last year and just did an upgrade to Beowulf
> about a week ago.  My goal now is to get Beowulf to run close enough
> to my Debian Stretch system that my wife and daughter can't tell the
> difference.  I mount the same partition on home for both Debian and
> Devuan, so that keeps the local configs the same.
>
> The issue that I am having is with sound.  My daughter reported that
> it was not working.  I tried playing a video (in Firefox) from my
> login and also got no sound.
>
> I have since determined that pulseaudio was not running (it is
> installed).  So I started the pulseaudio daemon under my login,
> started up Firefox and played a video.  Sound.  Yay!  I logged into
> my daughter's account and started the pulseaudio daemon, started
> Firefox and played a video.  No sound.  Boo!

Your experience matches mine, on various distros. Pulseaudio is a land
of a thousand hidden mutes, and a maze of state dependencies. So I
de-installed Pulseaudio several years ago. At the end of this email
I'll tell you about my latest Pulseaudio disaster.


> 1) If anyone can tell me how to get pulseaudio to see my built-in
> audio for all three logins, it would be greatly appreciated.

Reboot. Then, every time Pulseaudio fails, reboot. Pulseaudio is a maze
of state dependencies.

>
> 2) How do I get pulseaudio to run for each user when they log into
> the system.

Put the command to start it in each user's .bashrc, or in each user's
.Xdefaults and .xinitrc, or just have sysvinit or runit run the daemon
for all users (if all users can share Pulseaudio).

[snip]

I heard you loud and clear when you said you want your family to have
the exact same experience in Devuan that they had in Debian.
Unfortunately, Pulseaudio is very connected to dbus and I think
somewhat connected to systemd. So what I'd do is:

1) Uninstall Pulseaudio and Pavucontrol

2) Create /usr/local/adjustments

3) Install apulse, the app at a time Pulseaudio replacement

4) Create executable script /usr/local/adjustments/firefox containing
   following code:
      apulse firefox

5) Put /usr/local/adjustments at the very front of the path, and make
sure it stays there.

6) Use /usr/local/adjustments for any other programs that have
irresponsibly required junk software.

HTH,

SteveT

Steve Litt
Autumn 2020 featured book: Thriving in Tough Times
http://www.troubleshooters.com/thrive