Fri, 25 Sep 2020 22:54:14 -0700 - Marc Shapiro <marcnshap@???>:

> I have been running Debian for over 20 years, but I want to avoid
> systemd, so I am trying out Devuan.
>
> I installed ASCII a last year and just did an upgrade to Beowulf about a
> week ago.  [...]

> 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!
>
> The I started pavucontrol under both logins.  My login shows the 'Built
> in Analog Stereo' output device, and its monitor for input.  My
> daughter's login shows a 'Dummy' output device and its monitor for
> input.  under my wife's login, it shows the same 'Dummy' devices as my
> daughter's login .
>
> 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.
>
> 2) How do I get pulseaudio to run for each user when they log into the
> system.
>
> 3) The 'play' utility from the sox package gives an error whenever I try
> to play an mp3 file.  Using 'aplay' to play .wav files works fine.  What
> do I need to do to play mp3s from the commandline?
>
> (NOTE: I boot to console only.  Each user switches to a different VT and
> runs startx from there.)

I am running Beowulf and I have all the audio stuff perfectly running
using just *only* ALSA (M Audio Audiophile 24/96 sound card, also
connected to my hifi setup, whit a real-time audio configuration).

I do not need any of the pulseaudio stuff (which is just a useless and
total mess IMHO... Indeed, I have removed all the pulseaudio packages).

Firefox, from a certain version onwards (sorry but I don't remember which
one), removed support for ALSA from the default build configuration
(maybe it will be restored in the future, I don't know if it has already
been but I don't think so), keeping only pulseaudio support.

This should explain why you didn't have audio on Firefox; while I can
assume that the other problems depend on pulseaudio and its configuration
(also because I seem to understand that they happened after you installed
it...).

The solution I suggest is to totally remove any pulseaudio stuff,
use ALSA instead, install the `apulse` package which is a PulseAudio
emulator for ALSA (this should ensure that Firefox -- and any other
program which require pulseaudio -- will work even if pulseaudio is not
present).

Also I suggest to install some useful ALSA-related packages:
- `apulse`
- `alsa-utils`
- `alsaplayer-alsa` (and `alsaplayer-gtk`)
- `alsamixer` (and `alsamixergui`) to handle your audio devices
- `volumeicon-alsa` a lightweight systray volume control

Regards


al3xu5

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