Replace volti with volumeicon after all? (and drop xfce4-volumed)

hhh · 2016-05-12 03:20:59

I installed the CD ISO, ran bl-welcome, upgraded the kernel to PAE but didn't upgrade sound, and then I purged volumed and volti and installed volumicon, edited autostart for volumeicon instead of volti, and logged out. The only flaw I could see was that the icon changes to mute state in the panel (volumeicon) but not in the notification popup. I think this is acceptable.

I'd like to see this issue progress, let's make this solution happen.

hhh · 2016-05-12 03:26:45

BTW, what a flipping gorgeous distro we've released.

hhh · 2016-05-12 04:42:11

hhh wrote:

let's make this solution happen.

Let's not, pop-up volume notifications have stopped working, I'm sure due to the removal of xfce4-notifyd. Some more testing...

kleiner_hussar · 2016-05-12 04:46:14

hhh wrote:

hhh wrote:
let's make this solution happen.
Let's not, pop-up volume notifications have stopped working, I'm sure due to the removal of xfce4-notifyd. Some more testing...

I run volumeicon and xfce4-volumed without issues. Both the panel icon and the built-in volume buttons show notification bubbles.

hhh · 2016-05-12 05:06:55

Yeah, it's working again after a reboot. Not sure what happened there.

hhh · 2016-05-12 05:38:49

Bah, not working again after logging out, this needs more feedback and testing.

hhh · 2016-05-12 06:15:30

Everything is working perfectly after upgrading to our volumed backport.

@johnraff, let's push this please.

johnraff · 2016-05-12 09:09:56

hhh wrote:

The only flaw I could see was that the icon changes to mute state in the panel (volumeicon) but not in the notification popup.

I think that's because the muting keybinding in rc.xml is diverting the keypress straight to amixer, instead of letting volumeicon handle them.
Comment out this section, and the muting notifications appeared for me:

<!--
    <keybind key="XF86AudioMute">
      <action name="Execute">
        <command>amixer set -D pulse Master toggle</command>
      </action>
    </keybind>
-->

Everything is working perfectly after upgrading to our volumed backport.

I'm not sure what's happening on your setup there. For me, xfce4-volumed was part of the problem, not part of the solution. After removing it, the double-bars went away.

Anyway, try doing all the steps I suggested and see how it is (maybe after a reboot).

johnraff wrote:

*) Comment out the <keybind key="XF86AudioMute"> ...</keybind>section from rc.xml, and any other references to the XF86* keys.
*) Purge xfce4-volumed
*) Install volumeicon-alsa from Debian stable.
*) In openbox/autostart replace volti with volumeicon
*) Logout/in and make sure volumeicon's hotkeys are set to the XF86* keys.
Can you use the volume up/down/mute keys?
Does scroll wheel on the volumeicon icon change the volume, and raise a single notification bar?

hhh · 2016-05-14 18:20:53

OK, I finally got that to work! I had to manually edit ~/.config/volumeicon/volumeicon and change mute_enabled=flase to true.

The only glitch is if the notification popup is open and you mute by double-clicking or right-clicking volumeicon, it doesn't get reflected in the popup. This fixes itself when the popup times out.

Nicely done, John!!!

hhh · 2016-05-14 20:00:22

Grrr, pavucontrol not unmuting reared its ugly head after a reboot, dagnabbit.

johnraff · 2016-05-17 07:18:36

^I'm not getting that issue. Is it hardware-related?

EDIT Well drat! It has come back!! WTF is going on? It was working fine last week.
I was sure that issue was history...

Mute, either with a key or by clicking volumeicon, and I have to open pavucontrol to get sound back.

EDIT 2 For what it's worth, I changed volumeicon's Alsa channel from "Master" to "PCM" and now muting is OK.
Just prior to that I had an unpleasant 10 minutes when nothing worked at all. The analog output had been replaced by HDMI (which I'm not using), maybe when I was playing with the "set as fallback" buttons, and nothing I did brought it back.

Last edited by johnraff (2016-05-17 08:26:51)

hhh · 2016-05-17 09:34:17

Yeah, I'm afraid this is one area where the DE's have it over us. I would love to know what package or config we're missing that makes Pulse "just work" on my hardware with Mate, GNOME, and KDE (to be honest, I haven't tested sound in jessie-Xfce because that Xfce version is weak).

Head_on_a_Stick · 2016-05-17 12:35:52

hhh wrote:

Grrr, pavucontrol not unmuting reared its ugly head after a reboot, dagnabbit.

I cannot reproduce this on my (Haswell, multi sound card) hardware

johnraff's method works perfectly on my machine on a bare-metal install (I tried it from the live environment last time), even after a clean reboot.

The stock installation lacks a volume icon, as already noted.

johnraff · 2016-05-18 01:41:42

Unfortunately, my box seems to be behaving like hhh's. My current workaround is setting volumeicon's alsa channel to PCM.
BL already ships ~/.config/volumeicon/volumeicon (leftover from a bygone era): would it be worth adding:

channel=PCM

Would that be likely to work for most users? @hhh?

Needs yet more googling I guess... sigh...

Last edited by johnraff (2016-05-18 01:49:03)

johnraff · 2016-05-18 08:07:14

More on the sticky-mute thing.

It seems to be a common bug. @HoaS I wonder why you're not getting it?

Anyway, according to the Arch Wiki it's a failure of communication between alsa and pulse, when using the "Master" channel. The "solution" posted there is just a command to bind to a keyboard, however, of which we already have an abundance. What is needed is a way to arrange that when apps like volumeicon send signals to alsa pulse is kept in the loop.

A workaround in the manjaro wiki is to add /etc/asound.conf with this content:

pcm.pulse {
   type pulse
}
ctl.pulse {
   type pulse
}
pcm.!default {
   type pulse
}
ctl.!default {
   type pulse
}

and reboot. I've just tried this (with volumeicon's channel back on the problematic "Master") and muting is now working OK for me.

It remains to check out asound.conf's syntax and figure out exactly what this is doing (can anyone advise?), but if it looks harmless then maybe to ship an asound.conf file (it isn't installed by default) would be a way forward, regardless of what volume systray app we end up using?

BTW I just fired up a live session of the CD iso and had the same muting problem also with the current default volti.

xaos52 · 2016-05-20 06:10:54

Both volti and volumeicon work on the 'alsa' level, bypassing the 'pulseaudio' level.
I think both were meant for system setups not using pulseaudio, and hence causing the problems we have seen with them.

I suggest replacing them with 'pasystray', which is in the Debian repos, and which does work on the pulseaudio level.

It works OK on my system (single audio card, using HDMI output).

Of course we should test it thoroughly on different hardware setups. on the live system, etc ...
Looking esp. at you, HoaS, with the multiple audio cards.

Let us know if you find something wrong with it, or if you have other suggestions.

Thanks

kozimodo · 2016-05-20 12:18:17

Uggh.

$ pasystray 
** Message: PulseAudio terminated!
** Message: reconnecting...
** Message: pa_context_connect() failed: 
** Message: Connection refused
** Message: pa_context_connect() failed: 
** Message: Connection refused
*** Error in `pasystray': corrupted double-linked list: 0x000000000230e800 ***
Aborted

Last edited by kozimodo (2016-05-20 12:18:54)

xaos52 · 2016-05-20 12:27:31

^ pasystray from the Debian package?
Post output of

apt-cache policy pasystray

please.

Sector11 · 2016-05-20 12:28:52

pasystray not good for people that remove pulse though.

xaos52 · 2016-05-20 12:44:20

Correct! But pulse is the way to go.
And it is installed by default in Bunsenlabs, or am I mistaken?
A user removing pulse should switch to either volumeicon or volti.
It will be difficult to support both pulse and no-pulse out-of-the-box.
It can be done of course, but bl-welcome should then be modified to ask the user whether he/she prefers:
pulse -> install pasystray
nopulse -> install either volti or volumeicon

Edit:
I am only opening up the discussion. Nothing has been decided of course.

#21 2016-05-12 03:20:59

Re: Replace volti with volumeicon after all? (and drop xfce4-volumed)

#22 2016-05-12 03:26:45

Re: Replace volti with volumeicon after all? (and drop xfce4-volumed)

#23 2016-05-12 04:42:11

Re: Replace volti with volumeicon after all? (and drop xfce4-volumed)

#24 2016-05-12 04:46:14

Re: Replace volti with volumeicon after all? (and drop xfce4-volumed)

#25 2016-05-12 05:06:55

Re: Replace volti with volumeicon after all? (and drop xfce4-volumed)

#26 2016-05-12 05:38:49

Re: Replace volti with volumeicon after all? (and drop xfce4-volumed)

#27 2016-05-12 06:15:30

Re: Replace volti with volumeicon after all? (and drop xfce4-volumed)

#28 2016-05-12 09:09:56

Re: Replace volti with volumeicon after all? (and drop xfce4-volumed)

#29 2016-05-14 18:20:53

Re: Replace volti with volumeicon after all? (and drop xfce4-volumed)

#30 2016-05-14 20:00:22

Re: Replace volti with volumeicon after all? (and drop xfce4-volumed)

#31 2016-05-17 07:18:36

Re: Replace volti with volumeicon after all? (and drop xfce4-volumed)

#32 2016-05-17 09:34:17

Re: Replace volti with volumeicon after all? (and drop xfce4-volumed)

#33 2016-05-17 12:35:52

Re: Replace volti with volumeicon after all? (and drop xfce4-volumed)

#34 2016-05-18 01:41:42

Re: Replace volti with volumeicon after all? (and drop xfce4-volumed)

#35 2016-05-18 08:07:14

Re: Replace volti with volumeicon after all? (and drop xfce4-volumed)

#36 2016-05-20 06:10:54

Re: Replace volti with volumeicon after all? (and drop xfce4-volumed)

#37 2016-05-20 12:18:17

Re: Replace volti with volumeicon after all? (and drop xfce4-volumed)

#38 2016-05-20 12:27:31

Re: Replace volti with volumeicon after all? (and drop xfce4-volumed)

#39 2016-05-20 12:28:52

Re: Replace volti with volumeicon after all? (and drop xfce4-volumed)

#40 2016-05-20 12:44:20

Re: Replace volti with volumeicon after all? (and drop xfce4-volumed)

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