Bug#775714: closed by Felipe Sateler <fsateler at debian.org> (Re: Bug#775714: pavucontrol: Connection to PulseAudio failed. Automatic retry in 5s)

[David Christensen]

On 01/19/2015 05:21 AM, Debian Bug Tracking System wrote:
> The problem is that you do not have pulseaudio installed. Pavucontrol
> in Wheezy is missing the Recommends on pulseaudio, which is why you
> did not get it installed automatically (this has been fixed since in
> the testing distribution).
>
> Please install pulseaudio and then pavucontrol should work.

Thanks for the reply.  I installed pulseaudio:

The following extra packages will be installed:
   libasound2-plugins libsystemd-daemon0 libwebrtc-audio-processing-0
Suggested packages:
   pulseaudio-utils pavumeter paman paprefs
Recommended packages:
   pulseaudio-module-x11 gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio rtkit
The following NEW packages will be installed:
   libasound2-plugins libsystemd-daemon0 libwebrtc-audio-processing-0
   pulseaudio
0 upgraded, 4 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 1094 kB of archives.
After this operation, 5096 kB of additional disk space will be used.
Get:1 http://approx/debian/ wheezy/main libasound2-plugins amd64 
1.0.25-2 [91.4 kB]
Get:2 http://approx/debian/ wheezy/main libsystemd-daemon0 amd64 
44-11+deb7u4 [14.9 kB]
Get:3 http://approx/debian/ wheezy/main libwebrtc-audio-processing-0 
amd64 0.1-2 [119 kB]
Get:4 http://approx/debian/ wheezy/main pulseaudio amd64 2.0-6.1 [868 kB]
Fetched 1094 kB in 10s (109 kB/s) 

Selecting previously unselected package libasound2-plugins:amd64.
(Reading database ... 134259 files and directories currently installed.)
Unpacking libasound2-plugins:amd64 (from 
.../libasound2-plugins_1.0.25-2_amd64.deb) ...
Selecting previously unselected package libsystemd-daemon0:amd64.
Unpacking libsystemd-daemon0:amd64 (from 
.../libsystemd-daemon0_44-11+deb7u4_amd64.deb) ...
Selecting previously unselected package libwebrtc-audio-processing-0:amd64.
Unpacking libwebrtc-audio-processing-0:amd64 (from 
.../libwebrtc-audio-processing-0_0.1-2_amd64.deb) ...
Selecting previously unselected package pulseaudio.
Unpacking pulseaudio (from .../pulseaudio_2.0-6.1_amd64.deb) ...
Processing triggers for man-db ...
Setting up libasound2-plugins:amd64 (1.0.25-2) ...
Setting up libsystemd-daemon0:amd64 (44-11+deb7u4) ...
Setting up libwebrtc-audio-processing-0:amd64 (0.1-2) ...
Setting up pulseaudio (2.0-6.1) ...
Adding user pulse to group audio
[warn] PulseAudio configured for per-user sessions ... (warning).


Pulse Audio Volume Control now works.  :-)


A while back, I wanted to build a real-time kernel for audio work. 
apt-get was pulling in ~700 MB of files -- a huge tree of documentation 
and documentation processors.  Then I learned about the 
--no-install-recommends option, and the download became orders of 
magnitude smaller.  I consider it a bug that apt-get installs 
recommended packages by default, and almost always use 
--no-install-recommends.


In addition to "recommends" and "suggests", Apt appears to have the 
concept of "requires" (for example, pulseaudio seems to require 
libasound2-plugins, libsystemd-daemon0, and 
libwebrtc-audio-processing-0, as demonstrated above).  So, pavucontrol 
should require pulseaudio.  The bug tracking system indicates that the 
problem is fixed in Testing (Jessie).  Will it be fixed in Stable (Wheezy)?


David