The audio group

[Scott Lavender]

On Tue, Aug 24, 2010 at 8:56 AM, ttoine at ttoine.net <ttoine at ttoine.net>wrote:

>
>
> Le 24/08/2010 12:11, Cory K. a écrit :
>
> On 08/24/2010 04:56 AM, David Henningsson wrote:
>
>
>  Hi,
>
> Adding users to the audio group is not recommended for reasons I've just
> documented here: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Audio/TheAudioGroup
>
> Looking at ubuntu studio documentation, you seem to recommend people to
> add themselves to the audio group pretty much (found by doing a search
> for "audio group" on help.ubuntu.com), so can we remove it? Change it to
> something else?
>
>
>
>  That's under the "community" section. Something we don't control.
>
> Also, it was nessesary in the past because of permissions needed for
> some soundcards. (firewire I believe) From what I have seen, our users
> are folks who have "single-user" systems. (this is actually our target
> audience and setup) So your "Implications" section will not apply to them.
>
> Someone with more current grasp on the situation should chime in. As
> long as a solution can be found that works for everyone we can change
> the documentation. In the end, adding users still might be needed for
> corner cases and those folks won't care. They'll just want their gear to
> work. :)
>
>
> -Cory K.
>
>
>
>  David, Cory,
>
> Their would be one case, when a user would have his workstation in a
> dedicated room for noisy hardware, and use a remote connection with a low
> power computer in the studio, where this could be a problem as David
> described.
>
> With the current LTS release, the use of the "audio" group is for a real
> time use of jackd. The document you may have found is this one, I guess:
> https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UbuntuStudioPreparation#Real time (-rt)
> and Low latency (-lowlatency) kernels<https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UbuntuStudioPreparation#Real%20time%20%28-rt%29%20and%20Low%20latency%20%28-lowlatency%29%20kernels>
>
> For firewire sound cards, ffado driver needs user to be member of the
> "video" group, as a firewire sound card is considered to be similar as a
> "dv" camera by firewire libraries.
>
> Maybe, we just have to change "audio" group for "realtime" or something
> like that. That would mean changing the post configuration of jackd
> installation package, wich create the "audio" settings/entries for real time
> use. If you think this is compulsory, then, it is easy to do it: ask the
> jackd maintainer to change the group name, I and other update their
> documentation and it's done.
>
> To "fine tune", a dedicated possibility should be added to "User and Group
> Manager Privileges" GUI, and maybe the "Use audio devices" should be renamed
> for "Use audio devices on remote connection" or something like that.
>
> Toine
>
>
Crimsun has mentioned that the user shouldn't be added to the audio group at
all for real-time privileges.  My understanding is that privileges are
granted by ConsoleKit for the active user at the keyboard.  Unfortunately,
that is the extent of my understanding.

You can see his explanation beginning at [20:09] here:
http://irclogs.ubuntu.com/2010/05/16/%23ubuntustudio-devel.txt

I haven't tested this though and I don't think the user has been removed by
default from the audio group for maverick at this point.

ScottL
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