[SOLVED] LXDE: no sound in thunderbird

Question

Just cleaned up my laptop by removing KDE, Gnome, and every other DE/WM I've managed to collect over the years. Now I'm running LXDE, and am so far delighted with how far it's come since the last time I tried it (several years ago).
Anyway, I've got everything working just how I want it, except for Thunderbird/Lightning notification sounds. They just don't play. I installed pulseaudio and sound from other GTK apps (pidgin) works just fine, as does youtube, etc.
I've read a few TBird bug reports that hinted it relied of ESD for sound. I only found ESD in AUR, though:
aur/esound 0.2.41-3 (285)
    Enlightened Sound Daemon
Previously I was using KDE4 and Thunderbird sounds worked, I assume via ARTS.
Anyone have any idea?
$ pacman -Qs | grep alsa
local/alsa-lib 1.0.25-1
local/alsa-plugins 1.0.25-1
    Extra alsa plugins
local/alsa-utils 1.0.25-1
local/alsaplayer 0.99.81-3
local/lib32-alsa-lib 1.0.25-1
local/lib32-alsa-plugins 1.0.25-1
    Extra alsa plugins (32-bit)
local/pulseaudio-alsa 2-1
$ pacman -Qs | grep pulse
local/lib32-libpulse 1.1-2
local/libcanberra-pulse 0.28-2
local/libpulse 1.1-2
local/pulseaudio 1.1-2
local/pulseaudio-alsa 2-1
$ ps -fu dfelicia
UID        PID  PPID  C STIME TTY          TIME CMD
dfelicia   915   774  0 09:23 ?        00:00:00 ck-launch-session startlxde
dfelicia   970     1  0 09:23 ?        00:00:00 dbus-launch --autolaunch=64307e44dfc5ae8be738b0e24b85de65 --binary-syntax --close-stderr
dfelicia   971     1  0 09:23 ?        00:00:00 /usr/bin/dbus-daemon --fork --print-pid 5 --print-address 7 --session
dfelicia   974     1  0 09:23 ?        00:00:00 /usr/lib/dconf/dconf-service
dfelicia  1002   915  0 09:23 ?        00:00:00 /usr/bin/lxsession -s LXDE -e LXDE
dfelicia  1009     1  0 09:23 ?        00:00:00 dbus-launch --sh-syntax --exit-with-session
dfelicia  1010     1  0 09:23 ?        00:00:00 /usr/bin/dbus-daemon --fork --print-pid 5 --print-address 7 --session
dfelicia  1013  1002  0 09:23 ?        00:00:05 openbox --config-file /home/dfelicia/.config/openbox/lxde-rc.xml
dfelicia  1015  1002  0 09:23 ?        00:00:26 lxpanel --profile LXDE
dfelicia  1016  1002  0 09:23 ?        00:00:00 pcmanfm --desktop --profile LXDE
dfelicia  1019     1  0 09:23 ?        00:00:08 /usr/bin/python2 -O /usr/share/wicd/gtk/wicd-client.py --tray
dfelicia  1024     1  0 09:23 ?        00:00:00 /usr/lib/polkit-gnome/polkit-gnome-authentication-agent-1
dfelicia  1026     1  0 09:23 ?        00:00:00 /usr/lib/notification-daemon-1.0/notification-daemon
dfelicia  1028     1  0 09:23 ?        00:00:00 /usr/lib/gvfs/gvfsd
dfelicia  1032     1  0 09:23 ?        00:00:00 /usr/lib/menu-cache/menu-cached
dfelicia  1034     1  0 09:23 ?        00:00:30 /usr/bin/pulseaudio --start
dfelicia  1061     1  0 09:23 ?        00:00:00 /usr/lib/gvfs/gvfs-gdu-volume-monitor
dfelicia  1088     1  0 09:23 ?        00:00:00 /usr/lib/gvfs//gvfs-fuse-daemon /home/dfelicia/.gvfs
dfelicia  1092  1034  0 09:23 ?        00:00:00 /usr/lib/pulse/gconf-helper
dfelicia  1094     1  0 09:23 ?        00:00:00 /usr/lib/GConf/gconfd-2
dfelicia  2649     1  0 09:24 ?        00:00:00 /usr/lib/dconf/dconf-service
dfelicia  2784     1  0 09:25 ?        00:01:30 /usr/lib/thunderbird/thunderbird-bin
dfelicia  3468     1  0 12:06 ?        00:00:01 pidgin
dfelicia  3713  1013  0 13:47 ?        00:00:00 xterm
dfelicia  3715  3713  0 13:47 pts/0    00:00:00 -bash
dfelicia  4236  3715  0 14:04 pts/0    00:00:00 ps -fu dfelicia
Last edited by dfelicia (2012-02-28 19:25:31)

Answer 1

that problem is likely a bug in PULSEAUDIO, as pulseaudio is SUPPOSED to be a drop-in replacement for ESD.
In KDE4 / QT Phonon takes care of the multimedia, and normally apps don't goto pulseaudio directly.
Output is send to phonon, which then sends it to the chosen output device, which CAN be pulseaudio.