Arch Linux

mbeniamino

Member

Registered: 2014-10-13

Posts: 4

Fluidsynth and systemd integration

I've followed the directions to enable fluidsynth ALSA daemon mode via systemd integration, but the instructions of this page https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/FluidSynth don't seem to work. It seems to me that systemd tries to run the service as root and can't connect to the user Pulseaudio instance neither using alsa driver nor using pulseaudio one.

Global configuration:

[benji@whiteroom ~]$ cat /etc/conf.d/fluidsynth 
SYNTHOPTS="-is -a alsa -m alsa_seq -r 48000"
SOUNDFONT="/usr/share/soundfonts/FluidR3_GM2-2.sf2"

Running as user (OK):

[benji@whiteroom ~]$ fluidsynth -is -a alsa -m alsa_seq -r 48000 /usr/share/soundfonts/FluidR3_GM2-2.sf2
FluidSynth version 1.1.6
Copyright (C) 2000-2012 Peter Hanappe and others.                                                                                           
Distributed under the LGPL license.                                                                                                         
SoundFont(R) is a registered trademark of E-mu Systems, Inc.                                                                                
                                                                                                                                            
^C                                                                                                                                          
[benji@whiteroom ~]$

Start service using systemd and log messages (FAIL):
------------------------------------------------------

[benji@whiteroom ~]$ sudo systemctl start fluidsynth
[sudo] password for benji:                                                                                                                  
[benji@whiteroom ~]$ sudo systemctl status fluidsynth
● fluidsynth.service - FluidSynth Daemon
   Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/fluidsynth.service; disabled)
   Active: inactive (dead)

ott 12 10:23:46 whiteroom fluidsynth[32058]: ALSA lib pcm_dmix.c:1022:(snd_pcm_dmix_open) unable to open slave
ott 12 10:23:46 whiteroom fluidsynth[32058]: fluidsynth: error: Failed to open the "default" audio device
ott 12 10:23:46 whiteroom fluidsynth[32058]: Failed to create the audio driver
ott 12 10:23:46 whiteroom fluidsynth[32058]: FluidSynth version 1.1.6
ott 12 10:23:46 whiteroom fluidsynth[32058]: Copyright (C) 2000-2012 Peter Hanappe and others.
ott 12 10:23:46 whiteroom fluidsynth[32058]: Distributed under the LGPL license.
ott 12 10:23:46 whiteroom fluidsynth[32058]: SoundFont(R) is a registered trademark of E-mu Systems, Inc.

I see that there are a couple of open bugs, but no one seems related to my issue. Am I missing something? Also, I see that for timidity the suggested approach is to use a per-user session service: wouldn't this be a preferable solution for fluidsynth as well?

mbeniamino

Member

Registered: 2014-10-13

Posts: 4

Re: Fluidsynth and systemd integration

Just noticed this warning in the post install script:

PulseAudio output when running as a daemon is known to be
problematic. See the following bulletin board post:
      https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=135092

Also, the message has been removed from the version in testing. I'll wait for the new version and see if it fixes the issue. I'll post the results here.
EDIT: the version in testing has the same warning.

Last edited by mbeniamino (2014-10-14 10:19:00)