no audio from cwdaemon

[N7DR]

natty, 64-bit:

There seems to be no way to obtain audio from cwdaemon.

The following should work (I believe):
1. as root: cwdaemon -n -v 100 -x b
2. in another terminal: nc 127.0.0.1 6789 < test
  [test is a file that contains text]
When I do this no audio is heard. Indeed, I have tried everything I can think of, but nothing generates any audio.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.04
Package: cwdaemon 0.9.4-7.1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.38-10.44-generic 2.6.38.7
Uname: Linux 2.6.38-10-generic x86_64
Architecture: amd64
Date: Sun Jul 3 16:36:36 2011
EcryptfsInUse: Yes
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=en_US
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 LC_MESSAGES=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: cwdaemon
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to natty on 2011-05-12 (52 days ago)

[Fabian Kurz (DJ1YFK) (dj1yfk)]

On Sun, Jul 03, 2011 at 10:48:30PM -0000, N7DR wrote:
> natty, 64-bit:
>
> There seems to be no way to obtain audio from cwdaemon.
>
> The following should work (I believe):
> 1. as root: cwdaemon -n -v 100 -x b
> 2. in another terminal: nc 127.0.0.1 6789 < test
> [test is a file that contains text]

This should probably be "nc -u", in order to send UDP packets.

> When I do this no audio is heard. Indeed, I have tried everything I
> can think of, but nothing generates any audio.

With nc -u, cwdaemon says:

cw: open /dev/audio: No such file or directory

Obviously cwdaemon it uses OSS via cwlib (package unixcw), but OSS is
no longer availabe by default. Using it with "padsp" fails due to a
problem with /dev/mixer (although it's supposed to be provided by
padsp).

cw: open /dev/mixer: Input/output error

It might be possible to "fix" (or break) cwlib in a way that it works
with padsp, but a cleaner solution would be adding PulseAudio support
to cwlib. I am not sure if cwlib is still maintained any longer by
its original author Simon Baldwin (G0FRD); the current version 2.3
seems to be from 2006.

If it is indeed unmaintained, I'd give it a try and add PA support.

73,
--
Fabian Kurz, DJ1YFK <email address hidden> - http://fkurz.net/ .---.
Markgrafenstr. 63 | | |
81827 Munich, Germany Learn Morse Code Online: | /|\ |
phone: [phone] http://lcwo.net/ `---'

[N7DR (doc-evans)]

Yes; I spent a lot of time on this yesterday, and that's exactly the conclusion I came to as well, with one addition: oss-compat should allow cwlib to work, but it doesn't because of bug # 659024 (which essentially renders oss-compat useless). oss-compat does allow unixcw to work in Arch (since Arch doesn't have bug 659024, said bug appearing to be a simple omission in packaging, although the bug has been around for quite a while now even though it seems like it would be easy to fix).

You're right, of course, that the real fix would either be to have unixcw support alsa, (or for Canonical to continue to supply a kernel with OSS support -- see the lengthy complaints about bug #579300).

73 -- Doc, N7DR

[Greg Beam (ki7mt)]

This bug nearly 5 years old, does anyone know of it is still valid ?