No Audio from some browsers (waterfox, LibreWolf, SeaMonkey)

[Member DaveW]

My system is antix21, 64 bit, Dell e5430. I’m trying several browsers.

Audio works on FireFox-ESR, and Brave-browser.
Audio is not heard on WaterFox, LibreWolf or SeaMonkey.

I have read several posts about audio problems with browsers. But so far, to no avail.

I installed pulseaudio, and set it to start on boot-up. (Did not make sound play.)

I attempted to start these browsers preceded by ‘apulse’ (eg., apulse librewolf). Browsers start, but soon crash.

I have checked alsamixer, to verify that pulseaudio is recognized, and not muted.

Here is system audio info from inxi. There is only one sound card.

Audio:
Device-1: Intel 7 Series/C216 Family High Definition Audio vendor: Dell 7 driver: snd_hda_intel
v: kernel bus-ID: 00:1b.0 chip-ID: 8086:1e20 class-ID: 0403
Sound Server-1: ALSA v: k5.10.137-antix.1-amd64-smp running: yes
Sound Server-2: PulseAudio v: 14.2 running: yes

What steps do you recommend?.. or, perhaps you can direct me to an appropriate forum post.

Thanks.

[Member sybok]

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Hi,

1) I check pulseaudio (PA) via pavucontrol, not alsamixer.
If pavucontrol gets stuck in connecting to PA, then PA is most likely not running.
2) Sometimes, the application better be called as follows: ‘apulse <usual call>’, e.g. ‘apulse firefox’.
This helps to get sound working using alsa.
3) Also, the method you used to installed the applications may be relevant to the problem – antiX custom tools are the preferred way, if they offer the application you desire.

Related post(s):
https://www.antixforum.com/forums/topic/no-sound-in-seamonkey/ <– this one is fairly recent.

BTW: You may also try to search ‘browser no sound’ or ‘no sound’ on antiX forum.

[Member ModdIt]

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I have LibreWolf, Tor, Ungoogled Chromium, sound with alsa working fine,
is your sound device set correctly in your home .asoundrc
alsamixer set correctly with no channels muted.

Pulse is a layer on top of and depending on alsa. Never needed the further complication and audible sound degradation.

Never seen a crash with LibreWolf, which version how is it installed. If from a download was the sha256 sum correct.

UngoogledChromium, and vivaldi would crash when the cache reached mammoth proportions, moving chrome cache to temp has
cured that issue.

[Member DaveW]

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Moddit,
Thanks for your suggestions.

All of these browsers were installed via Synaptic or antiX package installer from default repos.

I don’t know where, or how to check audio setup in “.asoundrc”.

In Pavucontrol, I don’t see anything that mentions pulseaudio.

When prefixing apulse to program start command…
A. apulse seamonkey (Opens the browser. But when an audio source is started, the terminal reports “Segmentation Fault” and SeaMonkey crashes.)
B. apulse librewolf
(Terminal shows:

JavaScript error: resource://gre/modules/XULStore.jsm, line 62: Error: Can’t find profile directory.
Missing chrome or resource URL: resource://gre/modules/UpdateListener.sys.mjs
console.error: BroadcastService:
receivedBroadcastMessage: handler for
remote-settings/monitor_changes
threw error:
Message: Error: Polling for changes failed: The URI is malformed..
Stack:
remoteSettingsFunction/remoteSettings.pollChanges@resource://services-settings/remote-settings.js:334:13

When an audio source is activated, the terminal rapidly reports a repeated string of errors:

[apulse] [error] do_connect_pcm: can’t open playback device “default”. Error code -5 (Input/output error)
[apulse] [error] do_connect_pcm: failed to open ALSA device. Apulse does no resampling or format conversion, leaving that task to ALSA plugins. Ensure that selected device is capable of playing a particular sample format at a particular rate. They have to be supported by either hardware directly, or by “plug” and “dmix” ALSA plugins which will perform required conversions on CPU.
ALSA lib pcm_pulse.c:743:(pulse_prepare) PulseAudio: Unable to create stream: Oops.

Strangely, WaterFox-classic began to work, yesterday. After checking to see if sound worked better on any browser using 4.9.xxx kernel (it did not), I switched back to 5.10.xxx kernel. Then, WaterFox started playing audio. Seamonkey and librewolf remain silent.

I did read the suggested post (re: No sound in SeaMonkey), and I have searched the forum for ‘browser no sound’ or ‘no sound’. The actions mentioned in my original post, were taken based on what I read in various posts.

Thank you.

[Moderator Brian Masinick]

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I explicitly ran seamonkey today; with apulse the sound works if I select a short youtube video; without apulse seamonkey does not display sound.

--
Brian Masinick

[Member DaveW]

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Brian,
It’s good to know that sound works, on SeaMonkey, for you.
For some reason, it doesn’t work for me.
Thanks.

[Member ModdIt]

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Are you using Firejail, LibreWolf can not find its profile directory,
maybe a policy problem.

You gave no version number, please pay a visit to

https://gitlab.com/librewolf-community/browser/appimage/-/releases
Latest is 104.0-1 which works fine for me.

The specific debian version has often been very outdated so I use the
community release.
I have no quickly available pure Bullseye at present location so have to hope
there is no GCC mismatch. Means can not check for you. Appimages do rely on system
recources to reduce package size.
Same applies to snap (crap) and flatpack.
If working ok: I have posted several times on unpacking to get faster start
and how to setup a user starter.

.asoundrc just check hidden files in home to find it. If you set your sound device
using the control center that file should be automagicaly created for you.

• This reply was modified 8 months, 1 week ago by ModdIt.

[Member DaveW]

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Moddit,
Thank you for your helpful post.
LibreWolf version 104.0-1 was installed via antiX package installer.
With pulseaudio installed, and configured to start on boot-up, audio now works on LibreWolf… but, as you suggested, not in Firejail.

Apparently, pulseaudio is problematic in firejail.

.asoundrc does not exist in my system. ControlCentre/Hardware/Sound Card Chooser reports “Only one sound card found. Nothing to do.” If that is the program which creates .asoundrc, it apparently doesn’t do so, because there is “nothing to do.” But, the LibreWolf audio does work with pulseaudio outside of firejail. (Thanks for your explanation of .asoundrc.)

Strangely, it appears that FireFox is able to adjust its “Audio Backend” to accommodate the available audio system.
With pulseaudio present, outside of Firejail, Firefox shows “Audio Backend” as “Pulse-Rust”.
But if pulseaudio is uninstalled, or if FF is run in Firejail, Firefox shows “Audio Backend” as “alsa”.
If LibreWolf was similarly accommodating, the audio issues might resolve themselves. (Suggestions to that effect have been made to LibreWolf. We’ll see if that is implemented in the future.)

I tried LibreWolf as an appimage. Audio plays fine (even without pulseaudio). But I couldn’t make the appimage play in firejail. The firejail version in default repositories may be just a little too old?

Thank you.

[Moderator Brian Masinick]

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For what it’s worth, today I was using a recent Firefox Nightly image and at first I was not hearing sound on a video clip, so I exited the browser, and started my script to invoke Firefox Nightly, but I prepended it with a call to apulse, and then both the speaker and the headset worked as expected.

Generally speaking, with whatever browser I use, I tend to start them with apulse if I’m EXPECTING to be using video, and if I’m using one of them, come across a video that doesn’t do what I expect, I restart it with apulse; I have not recently encountered any stability issues with this approach, and at least for me it works.

--
Brian Masinick

[Member ModdIt]

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Hi DaveW, if you run the LibreWolf browser from home with user rights and UFW enabled
no real need to worry about firejail. I rid myself of it more than a year ago as it
gave me pain, my system was really secure as little worked as intended.

Majority of attacks/exploits I have experienced are in any case either using the hidden
Firefox feature plugins or good old Java and cross site scripting.

Watch out for Firefox or if used torbrowser freezing or crashing then respawning busy and
headless.

Using Firejail with modern self sandboxing browsers can be a pain in the rear and
maybe even counterproductive.

Side Note: The only browser I know which needs a component in root group is ungoogled chromium,
the chrome sandbox requires the membership to function correctly.

[Member DaveW]

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Brian,
Well, I tried “apulse librewolf” again, and it worked. (A couple of days ago, I received various error messages and the browser wouldn’t open.) Today, it plays fine. (I uninstalled pulseaudio a day ago.) With “apulse librewolf” I now have sound.

However, it does not work in firejail. Perhaps, it requires path info, in addition to app names.

Moddit,
I appreciate your comment that LibreWolf (and other self-sandboxing browsers) really don’t need firejail. Firejail is nice when it works, but it is a pain if the default profile file(s) don’t cover everything.

Your comments about browser exploits are well taken.

A day or so ago, I ran across Firejail release notes for version 0.9.70, which corrects a security issue: “CVE-2022-31214 – root escalation in –join logic”. Right now, I can’t find the URL, which included a warning to edit firejail.config to patch the problem, on firejail version 0.9.68 and older. Basically, the instruction was to add (or uncomment) two lines in firejail.config — (1.) “force-nonewprivs yes” (2.) “join no” (no quotes on either line). A detailed description is at: https://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2022/06/08/10

Thank you both, for your patient help!

• This reply was modified 8 months ago by DaveW.

[Member DaveW]

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After some experimentation, LibreWolf is working in Firejail, using apulse audio.

The command line is:

firejail --profile=/etc/firejail/librewolf.profile /usr/bin/apulse /usr/bin/librewolf

Because I’m using the default librewolf.profile, a shorter version of the command also works:
firejail --profile=librewolf /usr/bin/apulse /usr/bin/librewolf

Firejail –private functions can also be added, if desired.

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