Re: kern/54177: playing audio in firefox doesn't work after kernelupdate

[Izumi Tsutsui <tsutsui%ceres.dti.ne.jp@localhost>]

The following reply was made to PR kern/54177; it has been noted by GNATS.

From: Izumi Tsutsui <tsutsui%ceres.dti.ne.jp@localhost>
To: martin%duskware.de@localhost
Cc: thorpej%me.com@localhost, gnats-bugs%netbsd.org@localhost, tsutsui%ceres.dti.ne.jp@localhost
Subject: Re: kern/54177: playing audio in firefox doesn't work after kernelupdate
Date: Tue, 14 May 2019 02:48:34 +0900

 > > What audio interface does Firefox prefer?
 > 
 > It depends on the OS and they do not do a proper NetBSD release themselves,
 > so I would argue it is our call.
 
 For me both pulseaudio and alsa options worked.
 
 Possible problems are:
 
 (1) pulseaudio
  - pulseaudio defaults are not NetBSD friendly
   - mmap issue (patched in pkgsrc)
    http://mail-index.netbsd.org/pkgsrc-changes/2015/12/25/msg133989.html
   - too much RAM via shm_open(3) due to our shm_open implementation
     (uses tmpfs for shm_open(9) but pulseaudio requires 32MB for each app)
    -> it would be better to disable shm (i.e. set "enable-shm = no"
       in ~/.config/pulse/daemon.conf or /usr/pkg/etc/pulse/daemon.conf)
       but it is not default
   - annoying warning message on every startup of pulseaudio daemon
 >>   W: [(null)] caps.c: Normally all extra capabilities would be dropped now,
 >>   but that's impossible beause PulseAudio was built without capabirities
 >>    support.
     due to lack of "capabilities" support
     https://linuxjm.osdn.jp/html/LDP_man-pages/man7/capabilities.7.html
   - pkgsrc pulseaudio requires spidermonkey17, but it's extremely huge
   - Linux binaries that use pulseaudio (adobe-flash-player, for example)
     do not work on NetBSD/amd64 (PR/50603)
   - pulseaudio requires dbus daemon running (via /etc/rc.d)
 
 (2) alsa
  - alsa would be better even for NetBSD because users can choose
    oss or pulseaudio in ~/.asoundrc or /etc/asound.conf
  - possible problem is lack of documentation?
   http://mail-index.netbsd.org/netbsd-users/2009/02/11/msg003038.html
   http://cvsweb.netbsd.org/bsdweb.cgi/pkgsrc/audio/alsa-plugins-pulse/MESSAGE?rev=1.1&content-type=text/x-cvsweb-markup
  - it also requires alsa-plugins-oss or alsa-plugins-pulse packages
    but not explicitly mentioned?
 
 Probably I have to prepare an English version of this blog page..
  https://ch.nicovideo.jp/tsutsui/blomaga/ar1166538
 
 ---
 Izumi Tsutsui