[SOLVED] volti doesn't work with multiple soundcards

Head_on_a_Stick · 2016-05-07 16:37:44

EDIT: This is [SOLVED] by https://forums.bunsenlabs.org/viewtopic.php?id=1869

I have three laptops, an old ThinkPad X201 and two newer devices.

The ThinkPad has a single sound card and volti starts up fine and works. [1]

However, the other two machines have dual sound cards -- an analogue card and an HDMI card.

With both of these machines, volti will fail to start unless the configuration file is manually altered. [2]

I have a crude, ugly hack [3] here that fixes it:
https://github.com/BunsenLabs/bunsen-configs/pull/40

However, this requires that volumeicon-alsa be installed in the base system (and the live ISO) -- the package is 187KiB (amd64), I think it's worth it.

Does anybody have any better ideas?

[1] The volume keys don't work, see the other commit to rc.xml to fix this issue.

[2] http://crunchbang.org/forums/viewtopic.php?id=39394

[3] My speciality

EDIT: Added link to pull request.

Last edited by Head_on_a_Stick (2016-05-09 06:55:56)

johnraff · 2016-05-08 03:50:38

We had long, long discussions ( example ) about the choice of volume icon because #!'s pnmixer is not available in the Jessie repos (it's in Stretch). Volti has some issues, yes, but we eventually chose it over volumeicon because of some icon weirdness but mainly because of a bug whereby it put up two notification windows when the volume was changed by mouse scrolling.

I think "volti doesn't work..." might be a slight exaggeration for something which can be fixed by a simple edit to a config file, but anyway I've just installed and run volumeicon-alsa to have another look, and for some reason the double-notification-bar thing is now gone, at least right now and on my system.

I'm going to keep volumeicon in my systray for a while instead of volti and see how it goes - if some other users could try the same, and no issues come up, I wonder if it might be time to move to volumeicon-alsa??
( A pity this issue comes up just after the official release, not before. )

johnraff · 2016-05-08 04:18:21

Head_on_a_Stick wrote:

[1] The volume keys don't work, see the other commit to rc.xml to fix this issue.

The volume keys didn't work for me either (worked on Wheezy), but unfortunately that rc.xml code didn't fix the issue. 'xev' showed no keycode result for those two keys. Installing the backport version of xfce4-volumed did get them working however.

OTOH, opposite behaviour, my mute button is recognized by xev as "XF86AudioMute" and is not picked up by xfce4-volumed and needs the previously added muting code in rc.xml.

So it looks as if keys which are recognized as XF86* need the direct linking to amixer, while the anonymous ones are somehow detected by the backported xfce4-volumed.

Head_on_a_Stick · 2016-05-08 07:25:17

johnraff wrote:

I think "volti doesn't work..." might be a slight exaggeration for something which can be fixed by a simple edit to a config file

But new users will just find a broken volume icon and non-working volume keys and have no idea what to do.

Also, any sensible users will test their hardware using the BL live ISO image -- if the volume icon doesn't work there (which it doesn't in *any* machine with more that one soundcard) then BL will not be used.

EDIT: I would fully support a move to volumeicon-alsa

IMO, volti isn't very good -- volumeicon is in [community] in the Arch repositories, volti is in the AUR where all the dross goes.

Last edited by Head_on_a_Stick (2016-05-08 07:29:01)

johnraff · 2016-05-08 08:09:04

johnraff wrote:

We had long, long discussions ( example ) about the choice of volume icon ... Volti has some issues, yes, but we eventually chose it over volumeicon because of some icon weirdness but mainly because of a bug...

Nobody was crazy about Volti at that time, but it was chosen because volumeicon-alsa's double-bar bug was unacceptable. If that problem has gone away (was it perhaps an issue with xfce's notification daemon?) then I'm guessing a lot of developers might support a switch to volumeicon-alsa. But it will need more confirmation that that issue has really gone than my results alone.

I see that you're thinking of maximizing the likelihood of a good OOTB experience even on the live system, which of course makes sense, but installing two volume icons and adding code to choose between them feels a bit clunky to me...

The rc.xml volume keys fix is not guaranteed to work, as I found, but if the XF86* keys entries will work for a majority of users and do no harm for the others then by all means lets put them in.

Head_on_a_Stick · 2016-05-08 09:10:49

johnraff wrote:

I see that you're thinking of maximizing the likelihood of a good OOTB experience even on the live system

*cough*DistroWatch*cough*

johnraff wrote:

but installing two volume icons and adding code to choose between them feels a bit clunky to me...

I totally agree, it's a dirty ugly hack

EDIT: Perhaps bl-welcome could test if volti is running and offer to replace it with volumeicon (or modify the configuration file) if it isn't?

EDIT2: Slightly off-topic but bl-welcome is now such an important part of the BusnsenLabs desktop experience that I think perhaps it should be run at every login unless a "don't show again" dialogue is agreed to.

Last edited by Head_on_a_Stick (2016-05-08 09:22:21)

johnraff · 2016-05-08 09:46:44

Head_on_a_Stick wrote:

Perhaps bl-welcome could test if volti is running and offer to replace it with volumeicon (or modify the configuration file) if it isn't?

The idea of writing a script to auto-configure volti came up a while ago but I can't find it now. Anyway, it sounds like a good idea if we don't decide to switch to volumeicon-alsa, and could indeed be added to bl-welcome.

bl-welcome is now such an important part of the BusnsenLabs desktop experience that I think perhaps it should be run at every login unless a "don't show again" dialogue is agreed to.

What?! That sounds like way overkill to me. bl-welcome is supposed to be run just once, do it's job and bow out - unless the user specifically wants it.

Head_on_a_Stick · 2016-05-08 09:56:25

johnraff wrote:

What?!

OK, fair enough, just a suggestion

johnraff · 2016-05-09 02:23:54

^(A scouse joke, maybe, I thought...)

johnraff · 2016-05-09 05:55:29

UPDATE: I was wrong, I did still have volumeicon's double-bars, but they were only triggered by scroll-wheel over the icon, not by the keyboard. However, it now seems as if xfce4-volumed might have been the culprit! Remove that, put in your direct calls to amixer in rc.xml and the keys all seem to work OK. The only loss is that the volume keys no longer bring up any notification bar at all. Personally I can live with that, but I've started a discussion in the "development" section to try (again) to get a consensus on what to do.

UPDATE 2: Remove all the rc.xml entries, make sure volumeicon is configured to use the XF86* keys and everything works perfectly!

#1 2016-05-07 16:37:44

[SOLVED] volti doesn't work with multiple soundcards

#2 2016-05-08 03:50:38

Re: [SOLVED] volti doesn't work with multiple soundcards

#3 2016-05-08 04:18:21

Re: [SOLVED] volti doesn't work with multiple soundcards

#4 2016-05-08 07:25:17

Re: [SOLVED] volti doesn't work with multiple soundcards

#5 2016-05-08 08:09:04

Re: [SOLVED] volti doesn't work with multiple soundcards

#6 2016-05-08 09:10:49

Re: [SOLVED] volti doesn't work with multiple soundcards

#7 2016-05-08 09:46:44

Re: [SOLVED] volti doesn't work with multiple soundcards

#8 2016-05-08 09:56:25

Re: [SOLVED] volti doesn't work with multiple soundcards

#9 2016-05-09 02:23:54

Re: [SOLVED] volti doesn't work with multiple soundcards

#10 2016-05-09 05:55:29

Re: [SOLVED] volti doesn't work with multiple soundcards

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