[LAU] jackd pure-cli troubleshooting (DreamPlug, arm ubuntu)

[Dan S]

Hi all,

I've got a DreamPlug (successor to GuruPlug and SheevaPlug:
<http://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/c-5-dreamplugs.aspx>) - it's
very close to being a plug-and-play little ARM-based Ubuntu 9.04
machine. It's got audio in and out, and optical audio, so I'm hoping I
can get it set up as a generative audio box.

The audio works - "aplay" works straight away for playing back a wave
file. (I might as well mention that the build quality is a bit ropey:
the headphone jack doesn't quite stay plugged in properly, and nor
does the power cable extension that came with it.) Now for jackd and
friends...

I installed jackd 0.116.1 from the official repo (BTW, the official
binary package for this platform doesn't have alsa enabled -- I did
"apt-get source jackd" then manually built it with alsa enabled). I
installed supercollider from the latest git. Supercollider can do an
offline render of a wave file, and aplay can play it back. But I can't
seem to get any audio from a jackd-based pipeline: neither using
supercollider, nor using "jack.play" from Rohan Drape's tools.
(jackd doesn't report any problems: <http://pastie.org/2092598>. I'm
not familiar with oss at all but jackd fails to start when using it:
<http://pastie.org/2092634>)

So, questions:
* How to troubleshoot the jackd setup over a pure-CLI connection? I
could use GUI tools over X forwarding, but given the smallness of the
box I'd prefer to avoid installing GUI libraries etc. A commandline
jack-level-meter would be nice, if anyone knows of one, to verify that
sound is reaching jackd from its clients.
* Have you got jackd working nicely on similar systems (Linux ubuntu
2.6.33.6 #1 PREEMPT Tue Feb 8 03:18:41 EST 2011 armv5tel GNU/Linux),
and have any tips?

Thanks
Dan
-- 
http://www.mcld.co.uk