This section answers some frequently asked questions about aRts.
13.1. | Does KDE support my sound card for audio output? | ||||||||||||||||||||
KDE uses aRts to play sound, and aRts uses the Linux® kernel sound drivers, either OSS or ALSA (using OSS emulation). If your sound card is supported by either ALSA or OSS and properly configured (that is, any other Linux® application can output sound), it will work. There are however some problems with some specific hardware, please read the section for hardware specific problems if you're having problems with artsd on your machine. Meanwhile also support for various other platforms has been added. Here is a complete list of how the most recent version of aRts can play sound. If you have an unsupported platform, please consider porting aRts to your platform.
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13.2. |
I can't play | ||||||||||||||||||||
Check that artsd is linked to | |||||||||||||||||||||
13.3. |
I hear sound when logged in as | ||||||||||||||||||||
The permissions of the file
You can achieve the same effect in a terminal window using the command
For restricting access to sound to specific users, you can use group
permissions. On some Linux® distributions, for instance Debian/Potato,
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13.4. | This helps for artsd, but what about KMix, TDEMid, KsCD,etc.? | ||||||||||||||||||||
There are various other devices which provide functionality accessed by
multimedia applications. You can treat them in the same way, either by
making them accessible for everyone, or using groups to control
access. Here is a list, which may still be incomplete (also if there are
various devices in a form like
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13.5. | What can I do if artsd doesn't start or crashes while running? | ||||||||||||||||||||
First of all: try using the default settings in KControl (or if you
are starting manually, don't give additional options besides maybe
A good way to figure out why artsd doesn't start (or crashes while running) is to start it manually. Open a Konsole window, and do:
You can also add the
Doing so, you will probably get some useful information why it didn't start. Or, if it crashes when doing this-and-that, you can do this-and-that, and see “how” it crashes. If you want to report a bug, producing a backtrace with gdb and/or an strace may help finding the problem. | |||||||||||||||||||||
13.6. | Can I relocate artsd (move compiled files to another folder)? | ||||||||||||||||||||
You can't relocate aRts perfectly. The problem is that artswrapper
has the location of artsd compiled in due to security reasons. You can
however use the | |||||||||||||||||||||
13.7. | Can I compile aRts with gcc-3.0? | ||||||||||||||||||||
Short answer: no, aRts will not work if you compile it with gcc-3.0. Long answer: In the official release, there are two gcc-3.0 bugs which affect aRts. The first, gcc-3.0 bug c++/2733 is relatively harmless (and has to do with problems with the asm statement). It breaks compilation of convert.cpp. It has been fixed in the gcc-3.0 CVS, and will no longer be a problem with gcc-3.0.1 and higher. A workaround has also been added to the CVS version of KDE/aRts. The second gcc-3.0 bug, c++/3145 (which is generation of wrong code for some cases of multiple virtual inheritance) is critical. Applications like artsd will simply crash on startup when compiled with gcc-3.0. Even if some progress has been made in the gcc-3.0 branch at time of this writing, still artsd crashes quite often, unpredictably. | |||||||||||||||||||||
13.8. | What applications run under aRts? | ||||||||||||||||||||
Obviously, all of the applications included with KDE are aRts-aware. This includes:
Some KDE applications that are not yet included in the KDE release (for example, in kdenonbeta) also support aRts, including:
The following non-KDE applications are known to work with aRts:
The following applications are known not to work with aRts:
See also the answers to the questions in the section on non-aRts applications. This section is incomplete -- if you have more information on supported and unsupported applications, please send them to the author so they can be included here. |
13.1. | I can't use aRts-builder. It crashes when executing a module! |
The most likely cause is that you are using old structures or modules which aren't supported with the KDE 2 version. Unfortunately the documentation which is on the web refers to aRts-0.3.4.1 which is quite outdated. The most often reported crash is: that performing an execute structure in aRts-builder results in the error message [artsd] Synth_PLAY: audio subsystem is already used. You should use a Synth_AMAN_PLAY instead of a Synth_PLAY module and the problem will go away. Also see the aRts-builder help file (hit F1 in aRts-builder). Recent versions of aRts-builder (KDE 2.1 beta 1 and later) come with a set of examples which you can use. |
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