Mailing List Archive

Google Chrome now requires wayland and jack audio?
It looks like www-client/google-chrome just added wayland and jack
audio to the dependancies. So now I have to have Pulse _and_ Jack?

--
Grant
Re: Google Chrome now requires wayland and jack audio? [ In reply to ]
One of the side effects of using proprietary software : you can't
control with which flags it gets built.
With chromium-bin, there is a wayland USE flag, but nothing for jack.

On 7/15/22 15:28, Grant Edwards wrote:
> It looks like www-client/google-chrome just added wayland and jack
> audio to the dependancies. So now I have to have Pulse _and_ Jack?
>
> --
> Grant
>
>
>
>
>
>

--
Julien
Re: Google Chrome now requires wayland and jack audio? [ In reply to ]
On Fri, Jul 15, 2022 at 12:28 PM Grant Edwards <grant.b.edwards@gmail.com>
wrote:
>
> It looks like www-client/google-chrome just added wayland and jack
> audio to the dependancies. So now I have to have Pulse _and_ Jack?
>
> --
> Grant

Is that truly a Chrome requirement, like the company Google wrote the
ebuild, or is
this something a Gentoo dev did for some reason?

I'm curious as the USB disconnect problem seems somehow to be related
to using Chrome on the host machine for sites that do a lot of audio, like
YouTube. A clean boot of the host machine, followed by a clean boot of the
VM
and I've run for at least an hour with no disconnection problems. I can use
Chrome for email, messaging and reading newspapers with no problem, but
I run YouTube and twice I've had USB problems in the VM.
Re: Google Chrome now requires wayland and jack audio? [ In reply to ]
On 2022-07-15, Julien Roy <julien@jroy.ca> wrote:

> One of the side effects of using proprietary software : you can't
> control with which flags it gets built.

Yep. I didn't used to have the chrome binary package installed, but
there are a couple things that I've never gotten to work in Chromium
(e.g. Webex).

> With chromium-bin, there is a wayland USE flag, but nothing for
> jack.

I looked into that more, and I had misread the emerge output. It
wasn't google-chrome that depended on jack, and now I can't figure out
why it was installed. I did

# emerge -C virtual/jack media-sound/jack-audio-connection-kit
# emerge -auvND world

It didn't get reinstalled. And then a subsequenct

# emerge --depclean --ask

removed another half-dozen audio-related packagets (zita-* and
realtime-*, whatever they are). I'm sure the next time I try to use
audio on that machine it won't work.

I used to think that someday Linux sound support would get
straightened out, but it just keeps getting worse...

--
Grant
Re: Google Chrome now requires wayland and jack audio? [ In reply to ]
On 2022-07-15, Mark Knecht <markknecht@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 15, 2022 at 12:28 PM Grant Edwards <grant.b.edwards@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> It looks like www-client/google-chrome just added wayland and jack
>> audio to the dependancies. So now I have to have Pulse _and_ Jack?

> Is that truly a Chrome requirement, like the company Google wrote
> the ebuild, or is this something a Gentoo dev did for some reason?

Google doesn't provide an ebuild. The ebuild is written maintained by
the kind volunteers of the Chromium in Gentoo Project. For the binary
distribution from Google, those devs have no control over what
libraries the Chrome executables are built to use. All they can do is
try to figure out which libraries Chrome needs, and reflect that in
the ebuild so that after the binary from Google gets installed, it
works.

That said, there was no jack audio requirement for Chrome. I misread
the emerge output. The two new requirements that google-chrome was
pulling in were

dev-libs/wayland
dev-util/wayland-scanner

You don't have to be running Wayland, but you now need the above
wayland pieces.

There isn't actually a pulse audio requirement in the google-chrome
ebuild either, but if I don't have pulse installed, some audio stuff
in Chrome doesn't work. In web apps like Google Voice

* I can select my headset mic as audio in, but it won't work.

* I can't select headset as audio out.

Installing pulse audio fixed those problems.

> I'm curious as the USB disconnect problem seems somehow to be
> related to using Chrome on the host machine for sites that do a lot
> of audio, like YouTube. A clean boot of the host machine, followed
> by a clean boot of the VM and I've run for at least an hour with no
> disconnection problems. I can use Chrome for email, messaging and
> reading newspapers with no problem, but I run YouTube and twice I've
> had USB problems in the VM.


Yep, it sounds like doing audio via Chrome is disrupting the the USB
audio device that's in-use by the VM. Are there Linux audio drivers
for that hardware that you could uninstall to keep Chrome from seeing
it?

--
Grant
Re: Google Chrome now requires wayland and jack audio? [ In reply to ]
On Fri, 15 Jul 2022 19:28:07 -0000 (UTC)
Grant Edwards <grant.b.edwards@gmail.com> wrote:

> It looks like www-client/google-chrome just added wayland and jack
> audio to the dependancies. So now I have to have Pulse _and_ Jack?


Pipewire will allow you to handle both in a pretty seamless way.
Though it does take a bit of configuration to get it working.
Re: Re: Google Chrome now requires wayland and jack audio? [ In reply to ]
On Fri, Jul 15, 2022 at 1:56 PM Grant Edwards <grant.b.edwards@gmail.com>
wrote:
>
> On 2022-07-15, Mark Knecht <markknecht@gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Fri, Jul 15, 2022 at 12:28 PM Grant Edwards <
grant.b.edwards@gmail.com>
> > wrote:
<SNIP>
> > I'm curious as the USB disconnect problem seems somehow to be
> > related to using Chrome on the host machine for sites that do a lot
> > of audio, like YouTube. A clean boot of the host machine, followed
> > by a clean boot of the VM and I've run for at least an hour with no
> > disconnection problems. I can use Chrome for email, messaging and
> > reading newspapers with no problem, but I run YouTube and twice I've
> > had USB problems in the VM.
>
>
> Yep, it sounds like doing audio via Chrome is disrupting the the USB
> audio device that's in-use by the VM. Are there Linux audio drivers
> for that hardware that you could uninstall to keep Chrome from seeing
> it?

There is no support in Linux for this hardware. From the computer's
POV it's just an external USB device, partially an audio device, and
partially just controlled over USB. I've told pulseaudio and KDE in
general not to use it but I continue to see problems. I have no idea
what functionality the USB control port is providing.

I think the next step is to actually blacklist the device by its
USB device ID ala something like this:

https://www.projectgus.com/2014/09/blacklisting-a-single-usb-device-from-linux/

and see what happens.

This whole thing isn't overly critical to me. The device itself is
stand alone in operation. It's only attached to a computer to do editing
which actually can be done on the device's GUI without a computer, or
I can hook it to a Windows laptop, or even this machine if booted into
Windows. I was just wanting to be in Linux but open a VM to allow
me to edit more easily, which I actually can do but I have to hit the
reconnect button in software or pull the USB cable, both of which
work but are hacks.
Re: Google Chrome now requires wayland and jack audio? [ In reply to ]
On 2022-07-15 12:54, Mark Knecht wrote:
>
>
> On Fri, Jul 15, 2022 at 12:28 PM Grant Edwards
> <grant.b.edwards@gmail.com <mailto:grant.b.edwards@gmail.com>> wrote:
> >
> > It looks like www-client/google-chrome just added wayland and jack
> > audio to the dependancies. So now I have to have Pulse _and_ Jack?
> >
> > --
> > Grant
>
> Is that truly a Chrome requirement, like the company Google wrote the
> ebuild, or is
> this something a Gentoo dev did for some reason?
>
> I'm curious as the USB disconnect problem seems somehow to be related
> to using Chrome on the host machine for sites that do a lot of audio, like
> YouTube. A clean boot of the host machine, followed by a clean boot of
> the VM
> and I've run for at least an hour with no disconnection problems. I can use
> Chrome for email, messaging and reading newspapers with no problem, but
> I run YouTube and twice I've had USB problems in the VM.

How is the device for audio set up on the host? It may actually be a
USB-audio device it provides to the VM itself, and that would explain
the issue you are having.

Dan
Re: Google Chrome now requires wayland and jack audio? [ In reply to ]
On Sat, Jul 16, 2022 at 8:53 AM Daniel Frey <djqfrey@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 2022-07-15 12:54, Mark Knecht wrote:
> >
> >
> > On Fri, Jul 15, 2022 at 12:28 PM Grant Edwards
> > <grant.b.edwards@gmail.com <mailto:grant.b.edwards@gmail.com>> wrote:
> > >
> > > It looks like www-client/google-chrome just added wayland and jack
> > > audio to the dependancies. So now I have to have Pulse _and_ Jack?
> > >
> > > --
> > > Grant
> >
> > Is that truly a Chrome requirement, like the company Google wrote the
> > ebuild, or is
> > this something a Gentoo dev did for some reason?
> >
> > I'm curious as the USB disconnect problem seems somehow to be related
> > to using Chrome on the host machine for sites that do a lot of audio,
like
> > YouTube. A clean boot of the host machine, followed by a clean boot of
> > the VM
> > and I've run for at least an hour with no disconnection problems. I can
use
> > Chrome for email, messaging and reading newspapers with no problem, but
> > I run YouTube and twice I've had USB problems in the VM.
>
> How is the device for audio set up on the host? It may actually be a
> USB-audio device it provides to the VM itself, and that would explain
> the issue you are having.
>
> Dan

Hi Dan,
It is not set up at all for audio on the host. I don't intend to use it
in Linux
at all at this time. Line6 doesn't support Linux, they provide no Linux
software and my use on the computer at all, at least initially, is simply
to use the DSP edit control software to create & tweak patches. That will
either be by rebooting this machine into Windows, or solving the
disconnection problems in the Windows VM. However I have found in the
Line6 forums that some people see this disconnection problem even
running in Windows natively so possibly I've just been lucky and now
seen it in the 2 or so hours I forced myself to use Windows to update
the DSP firmware and do an initial checkout of the machine.

That said the device is a USB audio interface providing 8 USB input
and 8 USB output channels from the DSP + a stereo dry input over
USB. (And possibly more stuff over USB but at this time I haven't
investigated that.) I track, in both Linux and Windows, using Harrison
Mixbus32C (the for pay version of Ardour) and I will certainly be
investigating that at some future date but for now I simply intend to
take the audio output from the DSP to a normal input preamp interface
for recording and not use USB at all

From the standpoint of the Linux host my preference is that KDE
and most Linux apps don't even know the device is present.

Hope this helps,
Mark