sound from thin clients playing on server speakers

[Gavin McCullagh]

Hi,

On Sun, 09 Mar 2008, dbclinton wrote:

> That would certainly explain it. I actually have a telephone->USB
> adapter (plugged into the server) that I had hoped would allow a client
> to access the Skype software as though he's on the server and talk via
> the cordless phone but I haven't got Edubuntu to work properly with the
> device yet - it recognizes the device (i.e., it's an option in Volume
> Control/Change Device) but there's no sound to or from the device.

Well, that would be a microphone on the server so I guess that might stand
some chance of working.  That's assuming the device itself is supported in
linux.  You might need to play about with Skype's default audio output and
microphone devices.

> > > However, the problem I'm focusing on now is the misdirection of thin
> > > client sound. As I type this, the many (and strange) sounds from my
> > > kid's session of Scratch on his client are coming through my (server's)
> > > speakers - and not through his!
> > 
> > What applications are we talking about here?
> 
> Scratch is a bit unusual (scratch.mit.edu/ - it's a programming
> environment for kids) in that it's really a Windows executable running
> in Linux under Squeak (see
> http://scratch.mit.edu/forums/viewtopic.php?pid=275). I think there was
> something else being misdirected but can't remember right now.

The supported applications know how to deal with the ESPEAKER (or PULSE)
environment variables and act accordingly.  Not all applications know how
to do this (flash used not to, though can work now) and they therefore will
always just output sound to the server sound card.

You could file a bug, but if this is a windows executable running in WINE,
I'm not sure what chance you have.  Perhaps you could ask on the wine
mailing list whether they would support PulseAudio and/or the ESPEAKER
setup.  That's the most likely place this would be sorted out for windows
executables.

> Movie Player and Rhythmbox (not to mention Audacity minus the recording
> feature) are working fine.

Exactly. They know how to react when they see ESPEAKER set.

Gavin