requesting help to make sound work on thin/diskless client

[Doug Poland]

On Tue, Oct 10, 2006 at 05:28:36PM -0500, Raymond Gibson wrote:
> On Monday 09 October 2006 19:43, Doug Poland wrote:
> > On Mon, Oct 09, 2006 at 04:00:23PM -0500, Raymond Gibson wrote:
> > >
> > > I'm looking for help. I built a thin/diskless client that I boot
> > > via etherboot. After power up the client boots and gives me a
> > > login prompt. At that time I enter 'root' and I am presented with
> > > a command prompt. I then enter 'X -query <server ip>' and X starts
> > > and it works as expected.
> > >
> > > I would like to add sound. Unfortunately, I can't find
> > > documentation describing this process. So, could someone explain
> > > to me how to configure the client/server? My server is FreeBSD
> > > 6.1-RELEASE.
> > >
> > > BTW: I installed an ISA soundblaster sound and compiled these
> > > lines into my kernel. The kernel detects the sound card during
> > > boot-up.
> > >
> > > # Add the generic audio driver
> > > device          sound
> > > device          snd_sbc
> > > device          snd_sb16
> >
> > I have had good results using /usr/ports/audio/esound.  Install on
> > both the client and the server.  On the client, run something like
> > this before you start X:
> >
> >  client% esd -tcp -public -promiscuous -beeps -trust -bind 10.0.0.1
> >
> > where 10.0.0.1 is the IP address of the client's network interface.
> >
> > Connect to the server just as you have described.  When ever you run
> > a program that has esd support compiled in, the audio will be
> > directed to the client.
> >
> > Programs compiled with ESD support appear to direct sound to the
> > host indicated by the DISPLAY environment variable.  That should set
> > correctly if the server you're attaching to is running xdm, gdm, or
> > kdm.
> >
> > You may also have to set ESPEAKER, but I've found that just DISPLAY
> > works for me.
> 
> I'm not having much luck. I installed esound on both client and
> server.  I start esound on the server; esd &, the server responds with
> several beeps.  On the client I start esd as described above, I also
> hear beeps when esd starts.
>
> I start X, then login to KDE.
> I start Xmms with esound enabled. I get an error saying 'can't open audio'.
> 
> any ideas?
> 
Couple of things.

1.  Make sure sound works on your client to begin with.  The handbook
has good instructions if you need them.

2.  After you've started esd on the client, make sure it's actually
listening on the correct port.  On my client, this is what I see:

host% sockstat -l4
USER     COMMAND    PID   FD PROTO  LOCAL ADDRESS         FOREIGN ADDRESS
root     Xorg       6583  3  tcp4   *:6000                *:*
root     Xorg       6583  5  udp4   *:50689               *:*
dpoland  esd        642   3  tcp4   10.0.0.1:16001        *:*

3.  On the server, you don't actually run esd, just an app with esd
support compiled in.

4.  Finally, the fact that you're using KDE is *probably* the issue.
KDE uses arts for sound processing, and IIRC, doesn't play well with
esd.  Since I do not run KDE, I cannot advise you further on how to
redirect sound in that environment.  However, there are thousands of KDE
users out there and I'm sure google will turn up something.

HTH,

-- 
Regards,
Doug