Re: Sound and gnome--how exactly does it work?

[Daniel P Hensley <dansherryn juno com>]

On Wed, 25 Aug 1999 21:34:40 EDT Daniel P Hensley <dansherryn@juno.com>
writes:
>Elliot Lee wrote:
>
>> On Wed, 25 Aug 1999, Daniel P Hensley wrote:
>>
>> >       I'm still trying to figure out why I don't have sound in 
>Gnome.
>> > esd is up and working.  When I launch the panel, no sounds play.  
>When I
>> > go into control-center, sounds are turned on and I can play the
>> > individual sounds.  When I go into other applications (like 
>gnibbles) no
>> > sounds play.
>> >       Through browsing the source I think I kind of understand how
>> > sound happens.  I've verified that sound support is indeed getting
>> > compiled in, and that the sound files exist, and the soundlist 
>files are
>> > in the right spot.  But still no sound!  I'm getting really 
>frustrated
>> > with this, so if anyone has any ideas, PLEASE help!
>> >       Does anyone have good documentation on how esd should be set 
>up?
>> > The web site was pretty sparse.  Basically I start it up in 
>rc.local as
>> > '/usr/local/bin/esd &' and then do 'esdctl unlock' so I get sound 
>when I
>> > log in as different users.
>>
>> You need to run esd on a per-user basis, because there are 
>authentication
>> things involved that would normally prevent esd-run-as-root from 
>working
>> for the normal user (not to mention the potential security hole).
>
>How exactly do I do this?  I'm not quite sure, since I haven't found 
>any good documentation on esd.  I'm slowly coming up to speed on all 
>of this, but I've got a ways to go.
>
>> I'm curious as to why you can play sounds from control-center, 
>though.
>
>I wish I knew too (better yet, I wish the rest of Gnome could play 
>sounds
>too).
>
>> The sound events in GNOME are initialized upon session startup. You 
>are
>> using gnome-session to start GNOME, right?
>
>    Actually, I'm using the second method discussed in the FAQ--panel 
>& exec gnome-wm.  I'm still not sure how all these are related 
>(gnome-wm vs gnome-session vs. none of the above).  But if sound only 
>gets initialized through gnome-session, it seems like this is not the 
>right place to do it, since in my case it means it won't get 
>initialized.  I was trying to remember why I wasn't using 
>gnome-session, so I changed one of my accounts to use it, and then I 
>remembered--gnome-session hangs and never logs in.  I had to 
><CTRL>-<ALT>-<BACKSPACE> to return to xdm.  At one time I was trying 
>to get gdm to work, but when I tried to use it my system would 
>eternally loop through some sort of screen refresh when I rebooted.  
>If I recall correctly, the only way out of it was the reset button.  
>But that's the subjectof another post.

Ok, I've got some more information.  It turns out that gnome-session
wasn't hanging, it was just taking a long time (20 seconds or so) to log
in.  (Why does it take so long?)  When I gave it time to log in, sure
enough I get sound and everything works great.  But this still leaves
some unanswered questions:

* Why could I still hear sound using control-center?  Apparently it does
something different?
* What if I don't want to use gnome-session management?  Right now that
means I get no sound.  Should sound maybe get initialized elsewhere, or
maybe in more than one place (like gnome-wm)?

Dan

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