Networking + Sound together

I’ve been away from RISC OS for a bit but slowly getting back into it. Have just installed RPCEmu (v0.8.8) and notice that if I enable networking then my sound stops working.

I’m running it on Debian and was wondering if it had something to do with having to run RISC OS using sudo to get network to work (i.e., is it because its starting as root so the sound is being output by root and therefore not available to the regular user?)

Have just installed RPCEmu (v0.8.8)

Any particular reason for using a seven year old version?
0.8.15 is the current and that’s Oct 2016 (that said, with my luck, 0.8.16 will probably pop up it’s head)

(i.e., is it because its starting as root so the sound is being output by root and therefore not available to the regular user?)

Possibly. IIRC the su and sudo differences can be summed up with:

Su switches you to the root user account and requires the root account’s password.
Sudo runs a single command with root privileges – it doesn’t switch to the root user or require a separate root user password.¹
As a consequence any command launched as root that launches a sub-command does not launch the sub-process with root permissions. I think that’s the bit you’re falling victim to.

¹ Sudo is of course only available to user accounts listed as sudoers, i.e. you’re trusted to run some root level stuff but you aren’t root level.

Any particular reason for using a seven year old version?

Just because it is the one I have on a memory stick from RISC OS Open. I have since tried the 0.8.15 version and it does the same.

Well I have tried using gksu and sudo and these are the results:

So it does seem likely that there is something wrong with permissions or access to the audio device. Will do some more digging…

Well I’ve done a bit more now and figured out that whomever logs into the machine first gets access to the audio and everyone else is locked out (its a security thing apparently).

It looks like I can enable system-wide access to the audio but not sure this would be a good idea! Its a shame RPCEmu can’t have the network side of things running as a separate root-level process…or initialize the sound after its dropped back to normal user level.

Well I’ve done a bit more now and figured out that whomever logs into the machine first gets access to the audio and everyone else is locked out

Is there some kind of audio group on the system for the pulse audio that your RPCEmu launching user would need to be a member?

glen@sodium:~/tmp/personal/RISCOS/RPCEmu$ gksu ./rpcemu
ALSA lib pulse.c:243:(pulse_connect) PulseAudio: Unable to connect: Access denied

After you’ve supplied the password for root to the gksu pop-up?

Is there some kind of audio group on the system for the pulse audio that your RPCEmu launching user would need to be a member?

Yes, and it is possible to run pulseaudio in “system wide” mode but that introduces a whole bunch of security issues (even though that is the case, I did try it but it still does not allow the audio to come through from RPCEmu…maybe there are multiple issues at work?). All I know is that if I run it as a normal user (with pulseaudio in “normal” mode) then the audio works fine and networking obviously doesn’t because of the access to the tunnel/tap driver.

After you’ve supplied the password for root to the gksu pop-up?

Yes thats what I see after I have entered the password and RISC OS is up and running.