[SOLVED] Guitarix starts pulseaudio ?

[Brynildsen]

I usually do a pulseaudio -k when I am working on music and recording, since I don't need it in that moment. But when I start op Guitarix pulseaudio suddenly loads up and it is impossible to kill it, it constantly respawns. I run a very minimal setup Arch 64bit, i3wm, no DE and I know 100% that it isn't my window manager making the call for pulseaudio. I know that the moment you start GUI volume mixers, volume applets, browsers, mediaplayers etc pulseaudio will start. I don't do this while working on music and by keeping an eye on my processes I know that it is Guitarix.. But WHY..?

The easy fix would prob be to remove pulseaudio, but I kinda like it, just not when recording and working with jack. I tend to get a higher rate of xruns when pulseaudio is running, and I need as low latency as possible when tracking guitars. When I exit Guitarix I can kill pulseaudio again and it stays dead, until I or a program wish otherwise..

When I do a ps -ef |grep pulse I get

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[pikatu@lenovo ~]$ ps -ef |grep puls
pikatu    2461   672  4 11:23 ?        00:00:00 /usr/bin/pulseaudio --daemonize=no

killing pid 2461 doesn't work, it just respawns.. same with pulseaudio -k

When I do a ps 672 I get

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[pikatu@lenovo ~]$ ps 672
  PID TTY      STAT   TIME COMMAND
  672 ?        Ss     0:00 /usr/lib/systemd/systemd --user

My /etc/pulse/client.conf has autospawn = no in it.

I am using qjackctl with jack2-dbus and have been pretty happy with this setup for a long time. I have not experienced this behavior from other music software. I just started looking into Guitarix a couple of days ago.. How do I approach/debug this? Can Guitarix be compiled without depending on pulseaudio..? Help..

Edit: screencapture of what is happening. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3LVSwhmCao

[tramp]

Hi

I don't know what happen on your machine, but guitarix isn't in any way connected nor linked with pulseaudio.
It ain't depend on, or use it.

I run a very minimal setup Arch 64bit, i3wm, no DE and I know 100% that it isn't my window manager making the call for pulseaudio.

I'm in doubt here, what did your window manager use for system messages, for example, have you enabled sounds therefore?
Not that guitarix sends any system messages (it has it own log system), but maybe your window manager will inform you about a failing operation? Like it can't insert the systray icon?

regards
hermann

[Brynildsen]

I can confirm that it actually was my window manager..

I just installed xfce4 to check and unwanted pulse spawning stopped.. Oups.

I haven't figured out why, and I haven't installed or enabled any sound notification or stuff like that. The systray icon not showing is "normal" on that computer, just been to busy to fix it. I have same pulse behaviour on laptop and all systray icons showing up nicely as they should there.

The weird thing is, that I have never experienced this with any other programs. (Might be because I expect pulse to be running constantly with most other stuff I do when not doing music, and therefor never noticed it).

I will investigate further..

how do I mark solved?

[tramp]

So, I've installed i3 to checkout what happens.
And, I've no problem with pulseaudio at all.
The main difference in the setup is, I ain't use the dbus interface for jack2.
(and I'm not willing to use/setup the dbus interface at all.)
I use plain jack2 and my pajackconnect[1] pulse handler script set to handle pulse. So far I could run jack with or without pulse and run guitarix in both setups without issues.

[1] https://github.com/brummer10/pajackconnect

[Brynildsen]

Installing XFCE and having pulseaudio not spawning didn't survive reboot. Window manager was not the sinner..
Avoiding dbus settings and swapping out jack2dbus with a regular jack2 did not solve any problems either

But for the sake of completeness I found a fix, I'd share here for others in the future. The Arch people had the answer.
Pulseaudio has a service running
and
a socket that needs to be stopped and unmasked, in order to not constantly start the service again, everytime something calls for it.

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strace guitarix

revealed that libcanberra gtk plugin was the "bastard" calling for pulseaudio when starting guitarix

link to thread: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=232798