Mozilla browsers have problems playing videos with apulse

[ozsouth]

Think I'm done with mozilla browsers. Apulse issues are getting worse.
Have tried many combos with both Seamonkey & Firefox (64bit).
If I load one of an increasing number of sites, I then can't play any
emailed videos or youtube sites without a browser restart. I'm having
success with a Chrome/Thunderbird combo, which doesn't need apulse.

[mikewalsh]

@ozsouth :-

Hi, Oz.

Curious to know what you mean by 'issues', mate. I admit, being primarily a user of the 'clones' (Chrome, Iron, Vivaldi, etc.), I don't use the 'zilla browsers that much, but I manage to play vids & stuff when I DO fire 'em up.

I do have an audio issue when playing any kind of video or streaming content in ANY browser when running a 32-bit Puppy.....but I think that's more related to my audio chip than anything else, because it doesn't happen in any 64-bit Pup. If I try to adjust the volume during playback, after a split-second, it'll "jam".....and rapidly repeat whatever sound it was in the process of playing, ad infinitum, at the speed of a machine-gun.

Sometimes closing the tab will stop it. More rarely, I need to re-start the entire browser. On one memorable occasion, I had to re-boot Puppy itself before the infernal racket would stop!

But as I said, I think that's hardware-related (and pretty specific hardware, at that).


Mike.

[watchdog]

I had palemoon and firefox crashing on youtube videos due to apulse until I updated apulse to the latest from OscarTalks repo.

[DixieDog]

I beginning to like Pale Moon.

[ozsouth]

@mike - 2 sites I visit several times a day (theage.com.au & afl.com.au) & others I occasionally visit cause me to simply get 'hourglass spinning' for any video site AFTER I view the above sites. If I restart browser, videos play fine. Doesn't happen in Chrome, only Seamonkey or Firefox. I was getting the point of 10+ restarts per hour.
@watchdog - tried that latest apulse; also fossapup's one & others - problem still occurs regardless.

[mikewalsh]

@ozsouth :-

Huh. I get what you're talking about.

Maybe you can see why I've liked Chrome for so many years. I'll not pretend it's "issue-free" (it isn't!), but by & large, the clones ARE pretty reliable.....and their audio/video playback has always been top-notch, so long as they have access to all their required dependencies. I guess much of that is down to Google also owning YouTube.....they're not going to foist a 'sub-par' experience off onto users of their own browser, are they?


Mike.

[m-cuda]

Google Chrome is my preferred browser but as Google no longer distributes 32-bit browsers I use Firefox on my 32-bit Puppy - Precise Light - as Palemoon is unusable on my hardware - ten year old (circa 2009) ASUS Eee PC 1201HAB netbook with a dual core Intel Atom Z520 1.33GHz CPU and Intel GMA500 graphics media accelerator, 1GB of RAM and a 1GB hard disk swap partition. Using Precise Light 5.7.1 I spent many days trying to get Firefox to play sound. After several days I learned that the Firefox required that apulse be installed for sound to work.

The new version of Precise Light - 5.7.2 - allows you to install Firefox ESR (78.3.0esr 32-bit). Firefox ESR runs directly off ALSA - no apulse necessary - see https://forum.mxlinux.org/viewtopic.php?t=50894 - search for --enable-alsa. However, there is more to this story. If you install VLC Media Player the sound will stop working in Firefox ESR. If I remember correctly there is a post in the Firefox forum that says that although not officially supported Firefox will fallback to ALSA if it thinks a pulseaudio server is not available. Firefox ESR is a portable install. I checked the VLC install - it essentially only adds new files, it does not replace anything important (some irrelevant files are updated). So, the OS still has all the capabilities needed for Firefox to play sound. The part in red is not correct. The diff I did on the filesystems was missing a very important layer - puppy_precise_light-5.7.2 and in fact /usr/lib/libpulse.so.0 and /usr/lib/libpulse-simple.so.0 (and possibly more) were updated. Sorry about that. I looked at the error message from Firefox when I tried to play a video.

Code: Select all

[Child 8328, MediaDecoderStateMachine #1] WARNING: a2519d30 OpenCubeb() failed to init cubeb: file /builds/worker/checkouts/gecko/dom/media/AudioStream.cpp, line 331
[Child 8328, MediaDecoderStateMachine #1] WARNING: Decoder=9ee73e90 [OnMediaSinkAudioError]: file /builds/worker/checkouts/gecko/dom/media/MediaDecoderStateMachine.cpp, line 3891

The error message seems to indicate Firefox is trying to connect to a pulseaudio server. So I think something in the VLC install is fooling Firefox ESR into thinking a pulseaudio server is available. I am still trying to find out what this something is.

[ozsouth]

@m-cuda - AMAZING - the .deb version of Firefox ESR 78.3.0 compiled with --enable-alsa WORKS WELL - WITHOUT APULSE! Thanks! I have made a .pet - tested OK in bionicpup64-8.0 & ScPup64-20.06 - linked here:
viewtopic.php?p=6706#p6706

[Sky Aisling]

Ok, kennel mates...
I am totally confused.
My goal is to have a browser that will read youtube videos.
I hear unknown words to me like 'DRM' and 'Widevine' and 'HTML5 Video'.
The only browser that seems to read Youtube videos is Firefox with 'DRM' turned on. (the same for apluse Firefox)
But, I have all kinds of other issues with Firefox.
I have asked the Palemoon forum how to adjust Palemoon to read videos, but, received no response from them.
https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.ph ... 26#p202726
Palemoon gives me the dreaded black box of not recognizing video formats when attempting to view Youtube video.
I want to avoid using a Google browser because of all the tracking that Google does.
Palemoon is conveniently built into the Bionic Beaver(64) distro I use. Seems a shame to dump it if it can be fixed?

Any suggestions or comments are appreciated,

Sky

[s243a]

Ok, kennel mates...
I am totally confused.
My goal is to have a browser that will read youtube videos.
I hear unknown words to me like 'DRM' and 'Widevine' and 'HTML5 Video'.
The only browser that seems to read Youtube videos is Firefox with 'DRM' turned on. (the same for apluse Firefox)
But, I have all kinds of other issues with Firefox.
I have asked the Palemoon forum how to adjust Palemoon to read videos, but, received no response from them.
https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.ph ... 26#p202726
Palemoon gives me the dreaded black box of not recognizing video formats when attempting to view Youtube video.
I want to avoid using a Google browser because of all the tracking that Google does.
Palemoon is conveniently built into the Bionic Beaver(64) distro I use. Seems a shame to dump it if it can be fixed?

Any suggestions or comments are appreciated,

Sky

Not sure if this will help with palemoon but for Opera the following worked for me:

Extract this package using uextract. From the extracted folder copy the file

Code: Select all

/usr/lib/chromium-browser/libffmpeg.so

to

Code: Select all

/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/opera/libffmpeg.so 

http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... 2d#1024766

[BarryK]

I compile SeaMonkey from source, for EasyOS and EasyPup. It is configured to use alsa, not pulseaudio, so no apulse required.

You could try my PET, compiled for the Debian Buster-series of Easy (49.2MB):

http://distro.ibiblio.org/easyos/amd64/ ... ster64.pet

[Sky Aisling]

@s243a
@BarryK

Thank you both for your responses.
I'll start working on your suggestions tonight.
Might be a few days before I can respond.

Sky

[Barkingmad]

Hi, for info

I've just tried on a pretty much "out of the box" Bionic64. Built-in Palemoon, Youtube works fine both pictures and sound - portable Firefox esr, video plays but no sound.

On a different PC with Taha 32 Firefox sound works OK but I can't remember if it is the same download.

Bye for now
Will

[Sky Aisling]

@BarryK

Thank you for your suggestion to compile SeaMonkey from source and the buster.pet.

When you say 'compile SeaMonkey from source', I don't know what you mean?

Are there GUI tools to compile SeaMonkey from source?

Sky

[ozsouth]

@Sky Aisling - Barry was suggesting you download & try the .pet he has already compiled. However, if you have standard Bionicpup64-8.0, your glibc version (2.27) is just too early to run that .pet (needs 2.28 & upgrading is complex). Tell us about your Firefox woes.

I know you wanted to avoid Chrome, but I'm now posting from Bionicpup64-8.0 using my Google Chrome version, which plays videos with sound without apulse. You could try it (as always, at own risk).
You can choose an incognito window from the 3 vertical dot menu so surfing data isn't saved.
Is withdrawn.

[Sky Aisling]

@ozsouth

Barry was suggesting you download & try the .pet he has already compiled. However, if you have standard Bionicpup64-8.0,
your glibc version (2.27) is just too early to run that .pet (needs 2.28 & upgrading is complex).

Yes, I am running the standard Bionicpup64-8.0.
Yes, I did try the buster.pet on a download of Seamonkey from Quickpet.
The results were negative.

Tell us about your Firefox woes.

Oh, how can I tell you the thousands of ways Firefox is capricious, IMO?

First, let me say that Firefox.esr is the only browser I've tried yet that does play videos and streaming sites with no issues.
Yes, Google Chrome does also. But, I do all I can to avoid Google.

Firefox balloons the cache in an instant. The savefile icon in JMW tray1 starts firing off all kinds of red warning signs.
In the past, I'd have to shut down the browser and restart to regain stability in the savefile.
However, recently I found that if I 'quit' the tray app and not close out the browser, the browser goes ahead and functions normally.
The end of the world doesn't happen like the savefile warning proclaims. (I am running BP64 on a frugal flashdrive setup)

Firefox.esr collects data and cross references Palemoon even though the promo to Firefox.esr says it doesn't intermingle with other Mozilla products.

I have tried to eliminate Google Safe Browsing. However, Safe Browsing is re-initiated each time I open Firefox.esr.

Overall, my largest objection is the browser's marriage to Google and all the bloated data collection that Firefox and Firefox.esr initiates and sends to Google. (It's getting so instead of reading my newsfeeds I might as well go back and read my yesterday's emails because the subjects I've talked to my friends about in my emails show up in the next day's newsfeeds.)

I have my preferences set to clear history when Firefox.esr closes. I've combed through and set the options to clean up the browser upon exiting. The options work, but, as soon as the browser is fired up, boom goes the cache.

EDIT later: Did mention the bookmarks issue in Firefox and Firefox.esr? Sometimes the bookmarks catch, sometimes they don't.

You can choose an incognito window from the 3 vertical dot menu so surfing data isn't saved.

When you say, 'incognito' window you mean 'private' viewing?
Firefox says,

Firefox clears your search and browsing history when you quit the app or close all Private Browsing tabs and windows. While this doesn’t make you anonymous to websites or your internet service provider, it makes it easier to keep what you do online private from anyone else who uses this computer.

I'm the only one who uses this machine unless the gremlins during the night have a go at it.

So, that's my grumble for the day. Thanks for asking ozsouth.

Sky

[backi]

Hi Sky Aisling !

I am running Waterfox with Success since i had a few Problems with Firefox.
No apulse needed in Waterfox ......youtube running out of the Box.

Have a look here:
viewtopic.php?f=90&t=276
viewtopic.php?f=90&t=276&start=10

[Sky Aisling]

@backi
Thanks for the tip about Waterfox.

I notice that Waterfox is recently sold.

Waterfox web browser sold to System1

https://www.ghacks.net/2020/02/14/water ... o-system1/
Sky

[mikeslr]

Hi Sky Aisling,

You might want to try the librewolf sfs I've made available from this post. viewtopic.php?p=11448#p11448. It's a privacy hardened firefox fork. Haven't tried other website, but it plays youtubes OOTB. Ignore most of the discussion starting here, viewtopic.php?p=11197#p11197. Mostly it was me just thinking out loud about how to run librewolf as a portable still fully supporting spot's restrictions. The Librewolf SFS does that as well as any other web-browser.
If you read the discussion beginning here, viewtopic.php?p=12101#p12101 you may come to the same conclusion rufwoof & I have. If you really want to secure your data run either EasyOS or Puli and, with the latter, unplug the USB Key from which you ran it. If you want to maintain absolute privacy don't go on line. Otherwise, running as spot --properly set up-- under Puppies will do as well as running web-browsers in a firejail under other operating systems.

[ozsouth]

@Sky Aisling You can turn off some caching in Firefox ESR which may help - could try below, at own risk:
1. Open Firefox ESR
2. In 'Search' box (near top middle), type about:config & click 'Visit' option below it
3. When 'Accept the Risk' box appears, click on it
4. In 'Search preference name' box, type cache
5. Find 'browser.cache.disk.enable' line & double-click 'true' (changes to 'false')
6. Scroll down to 'browser.cache.memory.capacity' line & double-click on number in middle, type 65536 & press Enter
7. Scroll down to 'browser.cache.offline.enable' line & double-click 'true' (changes to 'false')
8. Close Firefox & reopen - hopefully improved.

[Sky Aisling]

@ozsouth

Ohhh! Thanks, ozsouth. That sounds like a fun test. The worst that could happen is that if FF.esr gets messed up, I uninstall then re-install.

@mikeslr
Yes, I am considering exploring Barry K's easyOS (if I can figure out how to install it to a flash drive).

When you say,

If you really want to secure your data run either EasyOS or Puli and, with the latter, unplug the USB Key from which you ran it.

Do you mean the flash drive that holds the distro .sfs that loads into RAM?

Sky

[mikeslr]

...

... I am considering exploring Barry K's easyOS (if I can figure out how to install it to a flash drive). See viewtopic.php?p=11559#p11559. Thanks to Keef, fredx181 and Mike Walsh, there GUI versions. http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 46#1032146

... run ...or Puli and, with the latter, unplug the USB Key from which you ran it.

Do you mean the flash drive that holds the distro .sfs that loads into RAM?

Sky

Yes. Puli is designed to run from a USB-Key. After its files are copied into RAM the Key is automatically unmounted and you will receive a message telling you to unplug the USB-Key. You only need to plug it back in if-and-when you want to preserve something. It also automatically senses if anyone is attempting to hack into your system and provides the User with four options as to how to deal with such threats.
Puli's thread is starts here, viewtopic.php?p=2551#p2551 with the OP being very informative. But carefully read its two pages. Both gjuhasz, its creator, and I have worked on methods to successfully deploy it.

[oriestehra]

Hello first time posting
I've just tried on a pretty much "out of the box" Bionic64. Built-in Palemoon, Youtube works fine both pictures and sound - portable Firefox esr, video plays but no sound.

[ozsouth]

@oriestehra - from a terminal, you need to run: apulse firefox

OR use this version, which doesn't need apulse: viewtopic.php?p=1463#p1463

[mikewalsh]

Hello first time posting
I've just tried on a pretty much "out of the box" Bionic64. Built-in Palemoon, Youtube works fine both pictures and sound - portable Firefox esr, video plays but no sound.

@oriestehra :-

Hallo.....and to the 'kennels'.

Yes, Mozilla's PulseAudio requirements are getting a bit silly, TBH. Ozsouth dug up an Alsa-compiled version of FF esr from Debian, here:-

viewtopic.php?f=90&t=312

You can either install his .pet version, or you can use my 'portable' version, which can be run from outside the save-file/folder. Download it; unzip it; move the resulting 'portable' directory anywhere you like - preferably outside the 'save'. Click to enter; click on 'LAUNCH' to fire it up. It'll create its own internal profile; you can even run this from a flash drive, thus making it truly portable.

FF78esr_alsa-portable can be found here:-

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... sp=sharing

Hope that helps!

Mike.