Hello: --- I am posting this question here at X.org because it is related to an X-application. Please advise if it has to go elsewhere. ---
I have recently set up an interesting, simple/lightweight system mail notification for my Devuan Beowulf installation ... ~$ uname -a Linux devuan 5.10.0-0.bpo.3-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 5.10.13-1~bpo10+1 (2021-02-11) x86_64 GNU/Linux ~$ ... which got me more or less what I wanted. Simple in that it was MTA only (no POP/SMTP/etc.) and lightweight because it had to be independent and do just that: notify me of system mail. ie: not integrated to a panel or desktop. I was forgetting to check my system mail regularly. The application is called Coolmail, it's ca. 1995 (!). Besides firing up a mail utility such as mutt, mailx, etc., it has is the option of playing a sound alert. ie: a system beep through the on-board hardware's piezo or a sound file through external speakers. I cannot seem to get the system beep to be loud enough and the application is rather dated so it uses OSS drivers, support for which was dropped in around the 4.15 kernel version. (?) My installation has Pulse Audio installed and I've never paid much attention to it save to raise the main volume when I'm listening to music or watching a movie, my box does no games. In any case, I was unable to get a *.au sound file played as coolmail complained of not being able to write to /dev/audio which was not present in my file system. After a while I came across a post (sorry, lost the link) that gave indications for installing the oss-compat package, which I promptly I did. Doing so removed osspd-pulseaudio. And now I have /dev/audio in my system, along with /dev/dsp and /dev/mixer which were already present: ~$ ls -l /dev/ | grep audio crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 14, 4 Jul 4 15:53 audio crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 14, 3 Jul 4 15:53 dsp crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 14, 0 Jul 4 15:53 mixer ~$ Now the *.au file coolmail could not play is played but unrecognizably distorted even if I drop the volume, so that would not seem to be the cause. And I am still getting an error from the application: ~$ coolmail -v Coolmail 1.3 watching file: /var/spool/mail/groucho Coolmail: Error writing to /dev/audio. --- snip --- :~$ The file plays normally via Audacious, VLC and aplay: ~$ aplay -v /home/groucho/Downloads/ding.au Playing Sparc Audio '/home/groucho/Downloads/ding.au' : Signed 16 bit Big Endian, Rate 48000 Hz, Stereo ALSA <-> PulseAudio PCM I/O Plugin Its setup is: stream : PLAYBACK access : RW_INTERLEAVED format : S16_BE subformat : STD channels : 2 rate : 48000 exact rate : 48000 (48000/1) msbits : 16 buffer_size : 24000 period_size : 6000 period_time : 125000 tstamp_mode : NONE tstamp_type : GETTIMEOFDAY period_step : 1 avail_min : 6000 period_event : 0 start_threshold : 24000 stop_threshold : 24000 silence_threshold: 0 silence_size : 0 boundary : 6755399441055744000 ~$ I did find a post from back in 1999 with the same problem but it never received a follow up. http://www.linuxmisc.com/5-linux-hardware/5cb2489886e85949.htm Any idea on how to fix this? Thanks in advance, JHM _______________________________________________ xorg@lists.x.org: X.Org support Archives: http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/xorg Info: https://lists.x.org/mailman/listinfo/xorg Your subscription address: %(user_address)s
