speech dispatcher not connecting to alsa

[Rob Hill]

Hello Hynek,

Thanks for your help.

As you suggested, 'speech-dispatcher' is the user for sd.  I su'd to
it, and aplay worked.  Spd-say did not, however,from this account, or
any other.  "Speech-dispatcher" is a member of the audio group, as is
my usual user account.  I did notice that while aplay was running from
the sd account, I was unable to start another audio stream.

I don't think I have enough knowledge to determine that pulseaudio is
definitely not running.  If you are interested in checking how I
disabled it, the method I followed can be found at:

http://idyllictux.wordpress.com/2008/10/29/alsa-instead-of-pulseaudio-for-ubuntu-810-intrepid-a-non-destructive-way/

Two things which puzzle me:

1.  I have also tried installing sd in user mode, with the same
result, that sd is unable to connect to alsa.  Therefore a permissions
problem, or pulseaudio being unable to run streams from two different
users is unlikely to be a problem?

2.  Sometimes the message from the dummy output module is spoken.  In
this case, surely sd is connecting to alsa, but not via a useful
output module?

Perhaps it is helpful to note that pretty much the only things about
my Intrepid installation which are not standard are:

1. Pulseaudio has been disabled, I think
2. Emacspeak, flite, and voxin (ibmtts_ have been installed.




Regards,

Rob 


Hynek Hanke writes:
 > Rob Hill wrote:
 > > /var/log/speech-dispatcher/espeak.log below.  Basically, the result is
 > > the same as when I start orca with speech-dispatcher.
 > >  Tue Jan 13 20:59:04 2009 [84768] ALSA ERROR: Cannot initialize Alsa 
 > > device 'pcm.dmixer': Can't open.
 > >   
 > 
 > I see you are running Speech Dispatcher as a system service,
 > perhaps under the user speech-dispatcher, not under your
 > user account. This is the reason why you can test sound
 > with other apps but Speech Dispatcher doesn't seem to be able
 > to access it.
 > 
 > You need to test ALSA from the user who is running Speech Dispatcher.
 > Check your /etc/init.d/speech-dispatcher. In Debian/Ubuntu its 
 > "speech-dispatcher".
 > Su to this user and try aplay.
 > 
 > Now, is speech-dispatcher in the group "audio" in /etc/groups ?
 > 
 > Also, are you totally sure Pulse Audio is not running? In some 
 > distributions,
 > it starts automatically on-demand even if you kill it before. There is 
 > always
 > a possibility, that your ALSA actually uses Pulse Audio for sound output
 > and in such a case, mixing of audio from two different users won't work
 > due to Pulse Audio design.
 > 
 > With regards,
 > Hynek
 > 
 > 
 > 
 >