Re: flash and mozilla (and firefox and epiphany)

[Paul Yeatman <pyeatman@ucsd.edu>]

->>In response to your message<<-
  --received from Ralph Katz--

> >I'm fairly sure the system is using esd with OSS drivers so this
> >could be the difference.  Well, actually, how do I confirm OSS
> >drivers? 
> 
> While I'm no expert, I can see mine here on this stock kernel:
> 
> ~$ grep -i oss /boot/config-2.4.25-1-686
> CONFIG_CHR_DEV_OSST=m
> CONFIG_SOUND_OSS=m

Ah, ok, and these are also marked as modules in my kernel and with some
quick research the OSS module is sound.o.  But "sound" is not a
module currently loaded by my system which means I must not be using an
OSS driver for my card.  The modules I have loaded and which are
related to sound are "soundcore" and "cmpci".

> 
> Just substitute your kernel image config filename.
> 
> >I have no idea what 'esdctl unlock' does but I did as you said (got
> >a series of increasing pitch tones when I ran 'esd &') but
> >got the same result: xmms et al. work fine, while the browser,
> >trying to employ the flash plugin, incurably freezes.
> 
> My flashplayer finally works w/ sound if I killall esd before visiting a
> flash-animated web page.  The freezes are more rare.  But I do not hear 
> any sounds from other sources (gaim, for ex.) while the flash animation 
> is playing, even with 'esdctl unlock'.

Ah, this is exactly what I've discovered only recently!  I'm sorry to
know about the problem but its nice to finally hear someone else
acknowledge the situation.  I was using debian package mozilla/firefox
with debian package flashplugin-nonfree and things didn't work. 
During a few days of off and on research, it didn't seem like anyone
else was having the same problem which was really perplexing me.

> 
> See the thread and my post of July 13  Subject: Re: Still no sound in 
> Flash  for more info.

I did a fair amount of googling myself and searching/joining mail
lists on macromedia, mozilla, and of course here.  I never found
the bugs as you did on bugzilla.  This would have helped.  As I
said, from all my searching, it wasn't clear that this was a
common problem.  I obviously don't have a good technique for
searching out known bugs yet.

> 
> Bottom line, it doesn't look like an issue of oss vs. alsa.

Than, what is the issue (I guess I need to go read the bug reports
more carefully)?  From the short summary, the one bug mentions
that it is hard-to-fix code in Mozilla.

It's strange that the problem seems to be with esd (when an esd
process(es) is already running).  I still can't help but wonder if
some other sound setup would resolve the problem although I have
no idea even what that could be :)

> 
> Oh, esd -nobeeps  will be easier on your ears!

Ah, so that's what the "-nobeeps" is about :)

> Here's my config file if it's any help:
> 
> $ cat /etc/esound/esd.conf
> [esd]
> auto_spawn=1
> spawn_options=-terminate -nobeeps -as 5
> spawn_wait_ms=100
> 
> Regards,
> Ralph

Thanks, alot.  I really appreciate the feedback and input.  Having
an understanding of the problem is already much better.  I can
play my favorite flash sites once again.  I suppose if anyone comes up
with a more slick solution, it will be shared with all those having
trouble getting to their favorite flash sites.

Paul
-- 
Paul Yeatman       (858) 534-9896        pyeatman@ucsd.edu
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