Bug 527428

Summary:	No way to configure sound output channel through yast
Product:	[openSUSE] openSUSE 11.2	Reporter:	Anders Johansson <ajohansson>
Component:	YaST2	Assignee:	Ladislav Slezák <lslezak>
Status:	RESOLVED WONTFIX	QA Contact:	Jiri Srain <jsrain>
Severity:	Normal
Priority:	P4 - Low	CC:	tiwai
Version:	Milestone 4
Target Milestone:	---
Hardware:	Other
OS:	Other
Whiteboard:
Found By:	---	Services Priority:
Business Priority:		Blocker:	---
Marketing QA Status:	---	IT Deployment:	---

Description Anders Johansson 2009-08-02 17:07:20 UTC

In 11.2, intelhdmi is available and works. In KDE's "multimedia" module I can see and configure KDE to use the HDMI output by default.

In YaST though, that doesn't seem to be possible. I can configure mplayer manually to use the correct output channel, and alsa to use it by default for everything, but if it's possible to do this in YaST's sound module, it's certainly not obvious how. So far, everything I've tried has resulted in normal analog output, which since I only have a HDMI cable connected to this machine, results in no sound output at all

YaST needs to have an interface where the user is able to select the correct output channel to use

Comment 1 Jozef Uhliarik 2009-08-11 13:49:58 UTC

Lado it seems that it is for you ;-)

Comment 2 Ladislav Slezák 2009-09-14 16:03:36 UTC

Takashi, how can YaST enable HDMI output? Is there any special driver option for that?

Comment 3 Takashi Iwai 2009-09-14 16:13:01 UTC

This is no proper thing yast can change right now.

The sound configuration (default routing) depends pretty much on which sound backend you use.  If you are using pulseaudio, it can be chosen via pavucontrol on the fly.  If you are using ALSA-native apps without PA, the default routing can be changed by defining in either ~/.asoundrc or /etc/asound.conf.

Comment 4 Ladislav Slezák 2009-09-21 14:15:30 UTC

Takashi, should YaST take care of this at all?

I mean, we have PA and other daemons/backends, so I think it should be solved on the application (or desktop) level. What do you think about it?

Comment 5 Takashi Iwai 2009-09-21 14:17:39 UTC

Right, it's a role of PA and other backends, and not a thing YaST should touch.

Comment 6 Ladislav Slezák 2009-09-21 15:54:24 UTC

OK, thank you for the info.

Closing as INVALID.

Comment 7 Anders Johansson 2009-09-22 04:33:23 UTC

Reopening this, because I believe YaST should be able to set the default output channel in asound.conf, there is currently no possible way of doing this without hacking that file manually

Also note that the reason I opened this bug is that there was talk of dropping pulseaudio, in which case there is no graphical tool anywhere that knows about sound over HDMI

Comment 8 Anders Johansson 2009-09-22 04:53:24 UTC

To make it a bit clearer what I mean, let me explain the experience I had in installing 11.2 on a system with hdmi as the only sound output.

Right from the install, the system was completely silent, because pulseaudio uses the default alsa output. During the installation there was no way of making yast play the test sound. I had to go to the pulseaudio config in kde and change all the sound channels there.

Once that was done, kde programs (and other programs that use pulse) could play sound, but everything else was still silent. mplayer, for example, and the flash plugin in firefox, because these do not use pulse. mplayer can be forced to use it, but not flash, as far as I know.

I believe YaST should be able to configure the default output channel in asound.conf, because it seems to be the only way of getting the whole system in one go. What we have now will lead an inexperienced user to think his sound is just broken. It's just not usable

And, as I said, if we drop pulseaudio, as was discussed by development at least for kde, then we have no clear way of configuring things at all.

Comment 9 Ladislav Slezák 2010-01-11 17:26:22 UTC

Just to clarify: how many sound devices does the machine have? Could you attach yast logs and 'hwinfo --sound' output?

Comment 10 Ladislav Slezák 2010-04-01 15:00:05 UTC

Sorry, I have no time for this feature, resolving as WONTFIX.