Groups > alt.comp.software.firefox > #18173

apulse firefox crashes firefox

From	Anton Antimo <anton@safunu.org>
Newsgroups	alt.comp.software.firefox
Subject	apulse firefox crashes firefox
Date	2026-09-09 09:00 -0300
Organization	A noiseless patient Spider
Message-ID	<87h5jyeit0.fsf@safunu.org> (permalink)

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I use ALSA on this GNU Void---see my ~/asoundrc below---, so in order to
be able to get sound out of Firefox, I run it with the program apulse
(see an introduction to apulse below). I've noticed that if I unplug my
USB soundbar, Firefox ends up crashing after being unable to open the
device. It crashes as soon as a sound is emitted such as some
notification popping up or trying to play music from some website.

Here's the crash as seen by a terminal:

--8<-------------------------------------------------------->8---
ALSA lib dlmisc.c:339:(snd_dlobj_cache_get0) [error.core] Cannot open shared library libasound_module_pcm_fallback.so (/usr/lib/alsa-lib/libasound_module_pcm_fallback.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory)
[apulse] [error] do_connect_pcm: can't open playback device "default". Error code -6 (No such device or address)
[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.
[...]
Exiting due to channel error.
Exiting due to channel error.
Exiting due to channel error.
Exiting due to channel error.
Exiting due to channel error.
Exiting due to channel error.
Exiting due to channel error.
Exiting due to channel error.
Exiting due to channel error.
Exiting due to channel error.
Segmentation fault apulse firefox
%Exiting due to channel error.
--8<-------------------------------------------------------->8---

(*) My ~/.asoundrc

pcm.dmixer {
type dmix
ipc_key 1024
slave {
pcm "hw:2,0"
format S32_LE
rate 48000
}
}

pcm.!default {
type plug
slave.pcm "dmixer"
}

ctl.!default {
type hw
card 0
}

(*) The apulse manual

NAME
apulse - The PulseAudio emulator for ALSA

SYNOPSIS
apulse <program-name> [program-parameters]...

DESCRIPTION
The program provides an alternative partial implementation of the
PulseAudio API. It consists of a loader script and a number of shared
libraries with the same names as from original PulseAudio, so
applications could dynamically load them and think they are talking to
PulseAudio. Internally, no separate sound mixing daemon is used.
Instead, apulse relies on ALSA's dmix, dsnoop, and plug plugins to
handle multiple sound sources and capture streams running at the same
time. dmix plugin muxes multiple playback streams; dsnoop plugin allow
multiple applications to capture from a single microphone; and plug
plugin transparently converts audio between various sample formats,
sample rates and channel numbers. For more than a decade now, ALSA
comes with these plugins enabled and configured by default.

apulse wasn't designed to be a drop-in replacement of PulseAudio. It's
pointless, since that will be just reimplementation of original
PulseAudio, with the same client-daemon architecture, required by the
complete feature set. Instead, only parts of the API that are crucial
to specific applications are implemented. That's why there is a loader
script, named apulse. It updates value of LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment
variable to point also to the directory where apulse's libraries are
installed, making them available to the application.

Name comes from names of both ALSA and PulseAudio. As aoss was a
compatibility layer between OSS programs and ALSA, apulse was designed
to be compatibility layer between PulseAudio applications and ALSA.

ENVIRONMENT
The following environment variables can be used to configure the
devices used by apulse. Try hw:0,0, plughw:0,0 and the like. Refer to
the ALSA user guide for a full list of device names.

APULSE_CAPTURE_DEVICE: Can be used to configure the capture device.

APULSE_PLAYBACK_DEVICE: Can be used to configure the playback device.

RETURN VALUE
apulse is a simple shell wrapper script that calls exec on the program
given in parameters. Except for cases when the wrapper itself fails to
load, return value is the return value of that program.

EXAMPLE
Run a newer Firefox browser with fake PulseAudio:

apulse firefox

AUTHORS
apulse was written by Rinat Ibragimov in 2014-2017.

(*) By the way

As the manual says itself, apulse is merely a shell script. Here it is:

--8<-------------------------------------------------------->8---
#!/bin/sh

APULSEPATH="/usr/lib/apulse"

LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$APULSEPATH${LD_LIBRARY_PATH:+:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH} exec "$@"
--8<-------------------------------------------------------->8---

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apulse firefox crashes firefox Anton Antimo <anton@safunu.org> - 2026-09-09 09:00 -0300
  Re: apulse firefox crashes firefox "Stanislav N. aka pztrn" <pztrn@oldproto.invalid> - 2026-09-10 07:27 +0500
    Re: apulse firefox crashes firefox Anton Antimo <anton@safunu.org> - 2026-09-10 11:39 -0300
  Re: apulse firefox crashes firefox Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2026-09-10 03:26 +0000
    Re: apulse firefox crashes firefox Anton Antimo <anton@safunu.org> - 2026-09-10 11:13 -0300
      Re: apulse firefox crashes firefox Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2026-09-14 23:12 +0000
        Re: apulse firefox crashes firefox R Daneel Olivaw <Danni@hyperspace.vogon.gov.invalid> - 2026-09-16 18:38 +0200
        Re: apulse firefox crashes firefox Anton Antimo <anton@safunu.org> - 2026-09-16 12:23 -0300
          Re: apulse firefox crashes firefox Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2026-09-17 04:13 +0000
            Re: apulse firefox crashes firefox Anton Antimo <anton@safunu.org> - 2026-09-22 11:54 -0300
      Re: apulse firefox crashes firefox not@telling.you.invalid (Computer Nerd Kev) - 2026-09-18 08:12 +1000
        Re: apulse firefox crashes firefox Anton Antimo <anton@safunu.org> - 2026-09-22 11:57 -0300
          Re: apulse firefox crashes firefox not@telling.you.invalid (Computer Nerd Kev) - 2026-09-23 07:33 +1000
            Re: apulse firefox crashes firefox Anton Antimo <anton@safunu.org> - 2026-09-22 20:24 -0300

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