Does anyone know how to allow root and users other than me to use the sound system?
Ever since pulseaudio was introduced in Fedora 8 and Mr. Lennart Poettering inflicted his peculiar ideas of security on us, the default installation hasn't worked properly, despite many BZ's and copious complaints! Specifically, pulseaudio invents the "seat" and only the one person in the "seat" can use the sound system. This precludes having root, or anyone else, from generating sounds - presumably it's a security risk. Bosh! A simple workaround was found - remove the alsa-plugins-pulseaudio package, and edit /etc/group, adding everyone on the system to the audio group (what a nutty idea). That removed the restrictions and restored sanity. Root could even generate a login tune via the /etc/rc.d/rc.local script, before anyone had logged on. With F17, this escape hatch has been removed. With the alsa-plugins-pulseaudio package absent, a simple command to play a sound yields a core dump: $ play /usr/share/sounds/KDE-Sys-Log-In.ogg dsp_protocol_open_node(): Could not open pcm device file /dev/dsptask/pcm2 Segmentation fault (core dumped) The pcm device file is, indeed, absent from the file system. In fact, no sounds whatever can be generated by any of the standard methods I use. (Except that Windows running inside VirtualBox seems able to manage it.) To get any sound at all, I've had to reinstall the alsa-plugins-pulseaudio package, but this allows only me to generate sound and destroys my crontab-simulated grandfather clock, among other things. On an i386 netbook, F17 sound works fine, as it always has, with the alsa-plugins-pulseaudio package removed. The play program doesn't complain about the absence of /dev/dsptask/pcm2, but just plays the sound. What new magic incantation is now required that I may be permitted to use my x86_64 sound system fully? -- David A. De Graaf DATIX, Inc. Hendersonville, NC d...@datix.us www.datix.us -- users mailing list users@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe or change subscription options: https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/users Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines Have a question? Ask away: http://ask.fedoraproject.org