Lots of good info, thanks.
I will certainly abandon the rc.local approach and try with autostart.
The pc I am refering to above is a jackd client, so the "system* hooks connect to the jack master, that is why I need to enable the local soundcards (on the jack client) through alsa_* . I shall change that to zita_* as well.

yes ubuntu studio uses xfce4 . I shall try KXStudio as well :)


On Fri, Apr 17, 2015 at 2:38 PM, Adrian Knoth <adi@drcomp.erfurt.thur.de> wrote:
On 04/17/15 13:16, Athanasios Silis wrote:

hi all, continuing from a previous email where I try to start up
several audio applications from a custom init script , which is run
from rc.local,

I originally wanted to point out that the use of rc.local for this stuff
is discouraged, but you've just discovered this yourself now.

You should really consider your approach and come up with something
else.

what could be conflicting here?

Everything. Your login manager is probably using the card.

The whole concept of integrating desktop distros with rc.local for audio
is not going to fly, because the distros set device permissions based on
the logged in user.

There might also be a system-wide pulseaudio daemon running, probably as
root. You might get away with pasuspender -- alsa_out, but I wouldn't be
surprised if not, unless you wrap your su call in pasuspender.

Also note that you shouldn't be using alsa_in/out at all, use zita-a2j
and zita-j2a or use jackd-0.124.x where you can simply specify
additional cards:

   $ jackd -A Intel -d alsa -d hw:DSP24,0

I don't know what you're trying to achieve, but I see mostly two
options:

  (a) if you don't need a desktop, don't use one.
  (b) if you do need a desktop, use their autostart features

For (b): You can have auto-login for a certain user. You can have
autostart for this user. Just run your script from the usual XDG
directories (or however your distro implements autostart).

Also consider switching to KXstudio - a lot of work went into it to make
things work. An integration effort other distros never bothered to do.


Cheers