[BRLTTY] Hints for "modern" audio setup?

[adrian at pa0rda.nl]

On Mon, Oct 12, 2015 at 04:57:56PM +0200, Mario Lang wrote:
> Hi.
> 
> I switched to a new workstation at work.  This machine apparently has no
> working PC beeper anymore.  While it appears in ALSA mixer, I can't get
> it to produce any sound, neither via plain console, nor via BRLTTY
> beeper output (and yes, the kernel module (forgot name) is loaded.)
> 
There are two groups involved in pulsaudio:
pulse:x:495:adrian,mail
pulse-access:x:494:adrian,mail

As you can see I added myself and the mail user to these groups to enable
make noise.
You could fiddle around with that.


> So I am looking for alternative ways to get BRLTTY to produce audible
> sounds again.  The obvious route would be via PCM, however, on this
> machine, I am using X11 setup as well, which needs working audio for
> speech synthesis and occasional sound playback.  As far as I understand,
> the most reliable way to keep working audio in X11 is to bite the bullet
> and use PulseAudio as that is what it wants to use by default.
> As far as I understand, PulseAudio is launched as part of the X11
> session, not as a normal daemon by default.  This apparently leads to
> the situation that I can play audio from the console if I am logged in
> with the same user as I am logged in with X11, however, I can not play
> audio via PulseAudio as root.  Additionally, PulseAudio seems to take
> the soundcard exclusively, so I can not play audio via plain ALSA
> either.  Now, this isn't as bad as it sounds, since I probably shouldn't
> do too many things as root anyway.  So dropping back to a user console
> and playing audio files there is actually a good habit to pick up.
> However, there is the problem that BRLTTY runs as root, and doesn't have
> PulseAudio output support right now.
> 
> I am wondering what to do about this situation.  As a prerequisite, I'd
> like to avoid custom configuration as much as possible.  Not because I
> am lazy.  I can configure a Linux desktop all day long if I really need
> to.  However, I can see that this might be an issue for other people in
> the future as well, so I am looking for a solution that works without
> forcing the user to do too much custom configuration on their part.
> 
> My forward-looking idea would be: Why not add PulseAudio support to
> BRLTTY, and enhance it with the capability of dropping to another user?
> This sounds quite involved code-wise, so I wonder if there is any other
> quick fix that would satisfy the above criteria of being non-invasive?
> 
> -- 
> CYa,
>   ???????????????
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-- 
	Adri P. van Bloois
	Antonlaan 104		email:	adrian at pa0rda.nl
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