Why can't we have voice in Linux?

That's pretty much it. It can't be that hard.

Some have made it work in ubuntu 8.4.

/263/9d/255579/1.html

Yeah, I've been through most of that post. I will try again when I have hours to figure it out.

I love Linux, but when things aren't working, it's a pain.

I'm running Suse 11.0.

search for the voice howto from Adamas Carter. It is great and based on opensuse.

Thank you. I will try that.

Unfortunately the link to his site and his tutorial is down.

Thats a pitty. In short it's easy if you run a 32 bit linux. Either the new pulseaudio-esd-replacement or the old esd (esound) make it work together with a proper ~/.alsoftrc
If you install openal to your system you'll find a (well) commented example for the ~/alsoftrc in /usr/share/doc/openal/examples - if you have only one soundcard you can just copy it.
If you are on kde 3.5.x you need to stop arts (switch sounderver off in kcontrol).
Then try which one works for you, esd or the replacement - so first install pulseaudio and the pulseaudio-esd-replacement, start it with "pulseaudio -D" , start secondlife, switch voice on and find someone to talk to. If this does not work log off, stop pulseaudio with "killall -9 pulseaudio", install the old esd, start it with "esd &", start secondlife again, find again someone to talk.
If both don't work then look forward and vote for http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-2662,
with that you'll need neither of them.

Thank you very much. I have Pulse installed. Don't know if I have ESD installed. I'll check when I get home.

I appreciate the help.

Also voted.

Well, Pulse is borked:

core-util.c: setpriority(): Permission denied

Trying ESD.

Okay, none of that works either. I give.

> core-util.c: setpriority(): Permission denied
did you start pulseaudio from an init script ? that won't work. Try from user session. Make sure your user is added to the pulse groups if any in suse.
For you last tried esd go on there:a) esd does not work or b) esd works and sl-voice not ?
if a) did you start esd from an init script ? Then root owns esd and your user can not access it. start esd from your user session instead.

Anyway to see clearer that information would be useful:
SL version, desktop environment, output of:
uname -mr && cat /proc/asound/version && cat /proc/asound/cards

Did not start Pulseaudio from an init script. Command: pulsaudio -D as user.

There is not Pulseaudo group; should I create one?

Started ESD with command: esd & as user. Voice does not work. Have the voice indicator above my AV's head, but cannot speak or hear.

Using: Second Life 1.20.15 (92456)

Desktop: Xfce4

uname -mr: 2.6.25.11-0.1-default i686

cat /proc/asound/version: Advanced Linux Sound Architecture Driver Version 1.0.16rc2 (Thu Jan 31 16:40:16 2008 UTC).

cat /proc/asound/cards: 0 [NVidia ]: HDA-Intel - HDA NVidia
HDA NVidia at 0xfe024000 irq 22

lspci:

00:00.0 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation MCP61 Memory Controller (rev a1)
00:01.0 ISA bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP61 LPC Bridge (rev a2)
00:01.1 SMBus: nVidia Corporation MCP61 SMBus (rev a2)
00:01.2 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation MCP61 Memory Controller (rev a2)
00:02.0 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation MCP61 USB Controller (rev a3)
00:02.1 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation MCP61 USB Controller (rev a3)
00:04.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP61 PCI bridge (rev a1)
00:05.0 Audio device: nVidia Corporation MCP61 High Definition Audio (rev a2)
00:06.0 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation MCP61 IDE (rev a2)
00:07.0 Bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP61 Ethernet (rev a2)
00:08.0 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation MCP61 SATA Controller (rev a2)
00:08.1 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation MCP61 SATA Controller (rev a2)
00:09.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP61 PCI Express bridge (rev a2)
00:0b.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP61 PCI Express bridge (rev a2)
00:0c.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP61 PCI Express bridge (rev a2)
00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 10h [Opteron, Athlon64, Sempron] HyperTransport Configuration
00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 10h [Opteron, Athlon64, Sempron] Address Map
00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 10h [Opteron, Athlon64, Sempron] DRAM Controller
00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 10h [Opteron, Athlon64, Sempron] Miscellaneous Control
00:18.4 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 10h [Opteron, Athlon64, Sempron] Link Control
01:06.0 Communication controller: Conexant Device 2f40
02:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation GeForce 8800 GT (rev a2)

the sl-voice readme says that hda-intel soundchips would work with sl-voice.
However the one on my laptop refuses to work with sl-voice having the same symptoms you describe; some similar reports at the very first voice thread here.
The solution for me was to get an usb-headset and set it to default with asoundconf, so I didn't check whether it's related to VWR-5708 and in how far there is a solution.



Edit:
Ok, I did a little testing with the laptop (normally I don't use it for SL). I recently changed it from kubuntu8.04 to debian lenny, didn't use sl with it since then. Now I saw that VWR-5708 hitted me for sure: no white dot before applying the workaround, for both the usb headset and the onboard hda. After applying the workaround the dot came back, voice works with the headset and refuses to work (dot but stay alone in speakers list, no green waves) with hda.
Tested with the 1.20.15 and the RC1.21.0. And I did a test with a self-compiled RC1.21.0 with the according patch from VWR-2662 applied, it does solve what is ment for : replace fmod - and with that of course not having to have a soundserver like esd or pulse. Works great with the headset, hda stays quiet for voice. This last test clears that not fmod is stopping slvoice from working with some hda chips.

Thank you. I will try a USB mic and see if I get better results. Though I cant hear anyone speaking either.

good luck

With a more general point of view I think it would be useful if everybody who tries voice would provide some information about environment and success, e.g.:
voice working (y/n/partially: hear/speak)| SL version | SL-Audio managed by (fmod/openal)| linux distribution and architecture | desktop environment| soundserver(s) | soundcard (input/output if not same) (output of cat /proc/asound/cards | ALSA Version ( cat /proc/asound/version)

on the machine I usually use SL with this looks like:
y | 1.20.15 | fmod | kubuntu 8.04 i386 | kde 3.5.10 | esd | both: C-Media CMI8738 (model 55) at 0xdc00, irq 22 | 1.0.16.
Compiled on Jun 18 2008 for kernel 2.6.24-19-generic (SMP)

think a collection of data like this would help rule out issues and decide what to go for to make voice work.

Thank you for the help. One of these days LL will probably fix it. More and more people are switching to Linux and OSX.

Sorry about that link being down -- My ISP had some trouble the other day and my whole setup was offline for hours.

I've re-done a bit on that website, and made a front page (http://www.adamascarter.com) that includes a link to an html-ized version of the original text file. If there's any problem, respond here and I will look at it. For now, it appears to be working properly.

Pulseaudio is borked. I've been running 64-bit OpenSUSE and have had problems with audio. It seems I can only get either regular sl audio or voice, not both. Pa got screwed up somewhere after I stopped using it, as it did nothing to fix my 64-bit problem. I'll look it over and figure out what it'll take to make it work again.

I have a jira in for the 64-bit audio/voice problem: http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-8054

If it gets enough votes, maybe LL will take it more seriously, and we could all benefit from sound and voice working properly regardless of 32/64 bit or distro.

All the other sound stuff on my cpu, including things like Skype work well and correctly. I see no reason why sl should be this funky.

I've finally had to have a look at voice and i'm starting to make some discoveries.

Firstly with a custom build of the viewer that uses openAL and not FMOD and with an alsa sound server everything worked perfectly for me. Even though i was running a 64 bit build of the viewer. For anyone who is interested what i did is documented at http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/User:Michelle2_Zenovka/voice.

(Basically i bootstrapped the voice with a script that sets up appropriate 32bit compatibility libraries)

This is not a lot of help for people who are trying to run the official builds of the viewer though so i am doing further testing on official builds and trying to see exactly what is going on.

There seems to be a failure mechanism where due to some audio device configuration (may be could not open output or input device but voice did not log this fault) the voice deamon constantly tries to reconnect and when it thinks its connected it only show you in the active speakers list. I am pretty sure this is what the majority of reported faults are, if the dam thing said could not open device then it would be less confusing but i am sure this is what is happening.

I'm going to play with different audio servers and try some different configurations to see what i can isolate out of this (i have some suspicions about how openal inside the voice is being used to open the audio devices and as the voice is closed source i can only confirm this by experimentation).

The other issue we have in the fix is fmod and how it decides to grab audio devices and there seem to be configurations of fmod/voice/audio server etc that just cannot work. What needs to be done is to determine how and what audio devices are attempted to be opened for various options. If any devices are grabbing /dev/dsp this is probably bad but /dev/dsp *can* be an alsa pseudo device in which case one app can use /dev/dsp if the rest use alsa correctly everyones happy.

M2

my hda_intel chip now works with voice after installing asound 1.0.17
to get a (input) capture volume better than almost 0 i had to use the alsamixer (kmix did't have any effect).

have fun