airtime in ubuntu 12.04 without pulseaudio
  • Vote Up0Vote Down Spyros TheodosisSpyros Theodosis
    Posts: 11Member
    Good morning everybody,

    I have installed airtime in ubuntu server 12.04 following the instructions from the manual in section: Automated installation
    Earlier on "preparing the server" the manual suggest to remove the pulse-audio server, so i had it removed.

    After enabling the the Hardware Audio Output ALSA , on the airtime-playout status i was getting:

    AIRTIME_STATUS_URL             = http://localhost:80/api/status/format/json/api_key/%%api_key%%
    AIRTIME_SERVER_RESPONDING      = OK
    KERNEL_VERSION                 = 3.2.0-23-generic
    MACHINE_ARCHITECTURE           = x86_64
    TOTAL_MEMORY_MBYTES            = 3960548
    TOTAL_SWAP_MBYTES              = 7631868
    AIRTIME_VERSION                = 2.1.3
    OS                             = Ubuntu 12.04 LTS x86_64
    CPU                            = Intel(R) Pentium(R) CPU G850 @ 2.90GHz
    WEB_SERVER                     = Apache/2.2.22 (Ubuntu)
    PLAYOUT_ENGINE_PROCESS_ID      = 7669
    PLAYOUT_ENGINE_RUNNING_SECONDS = 10
    PLAYOUT_ENGINE_MEM_PERC        = 0.3%
    PLAYOUT_ENGINE_CPU_PERC        = 0.0%
    LIQUIDSOAP_PROCESS_ID          = FAILED

    The output from both the "/var/log/airtime/pypo/pypo.log" and the "sudo -u pypo /usr/lib/airtime/pypo/bin/airtime-liquidsoap" command was similar:

    2012/07/23 13:02:36 [clock.wallclock_pulse:2] Error when starting output pulse_out(liquidsoap:): Pulseaudio error: Connection refused!

    After reinstalling pusleaudio everything worked ok.

    /etc/init.d/airtime-playout status
    AIRTIME_STATUS_URL             = http://localhost:80/api/status/format/json/api_key/%%api_key%%
    AIRTIME_SERVER_RESPONDING      = OK
    KERNEL_VERSION                 = 3.2.0-23-generic
    MACHINE_ARCHITECTURE           = x86_64
    TOTAL_MEMORY_MBYTES            = 3960548
    TOTAL_SWAP_MBYTES              = 7631868
    AIRTIME_VERSION                = 2.1.3
    OS                             = Ubuntu 12.04 LTS x86_64
    CPU                            = Intel(R) Pentium(R) CPU G850 @ 2.90GHz
    WEB_SERVER                     = Apache/2.2.22 (Ubuntu)
    PLAYOUT_ENGINE_PROCESS_ID      = 1067
    PLAYOUT_ENGINE_RUNNING_SECONDS = 46
    PLAYOUT_ENGINE_MEM_PERC        = 0.3%
    PLAYOUT_ENGINE_CPU_PERC        = 0.0%
    LIQUIDSOAP_PROCESS_ID          = 1083
    LIQUIDSOAP_RUNNING_SECONDS     = 46
    LIQUIDSOAP_MEM_PERC            = 0.5%
    LIQUIDSOAP_CPU_PERC            = 1.9%
    MEDIA_MONITOR_PROCESS_ID       = 1048
    MEDIA_MONITOR_RUNNING_SECONDS  = 47
    MEDIA_MONITOR_MEM_PERC         = 0.4%
    MEDIA_MONITOR_CPU_PERC         = 0.0%
    RABBITMQ_PROCESS_ID            = 1153
    RABBITMQ_RUNNING_SECONDS       = 43
    RABBITMQ_MEM_PERC              = 0.7%
    RABBITMQ_CPU_PERC              = 0.0%

    -- Your installation of Airtime looks OK!


    Please advise if there is another way to fix this or if it is ok to keep pulseaudio:
  • 6 Comments sorted by
  • Vote Up0Vote Down Spyros TheodosisSpyros Theodosis
    Posts: 11Member
    I am testing airtime to replace an old automation system on the radio station i am working.

    I have tested airtime for over 3 months there, without any problems, great job with airtime guys.


    I  recently had to moved airtime from Debian to Ubuntu server.

    The reason to move to Ubuntu was that i needed alsa 1.0.24 or later for my new M-audio Delta 66 sound card. For the same card i needed the envy4control from the alsa-tools-gui  package so i had the xubuntu desktop installed too.

    This is probably an ubuntu issue
    Post edited by Spyros Theodosis at 2012-07-23 08:08:19
  • Vote Up0Vote Down Martin KonecnyMartin Konecny
    Posts: 1,860Member
    The newer Liquidsoap binaries we provide have Liquidsoap support built in in the case the user wants to use this audio API.  

    I wasn't aware this would make pulse-audio being installed mandatory. Is "ALSA" selected as your output type in the stream settings page?
    Airtime Pro Hosting: http://airtime.pro
  • Vote Up0Vote Down Spyros TheodosisSpyros Theodosis
    Posts: 11Member
    Yes ALSA is been selected.

    At first remove pulse-audio and then i install airtime. 

    After that i installed the desktop to set up my sound card with envy4control and then i realized that there was a problem with pulse-audio and liquidsoap and i had to reinstalled pulse-audio.


  • Vote Up0Vote Down Martin KonecnyMartin Konecny
    Posts: 1,860Member
    Ok, so the best option here is to compile Liquidsoap without pulseaudio support.

    You can do this by reading the instructions here:


    Just make sure you don't remove the hash-tag for "#ocaml-pulseaudio"

    After this is finished, you simply need to copy one file into a location where Airtime can find it. Let me know when you get there.
    Airtime Pro Hosting: http://airtime.pro
  • Vote Up0Vote Down Spyros TheodosisSpyros Theodosis
    Posts: 11Member
    I real don't care about having pulse-audio installed.

    I wish to stick with the repository binaries, in order to have easier updates later.

    For now i must put my server on production the soonest possible.

    Maybe later on a VM enviroment ,  i will try it
  • Vote Up0Vote Down Larry MathewsLarry Mathews
    Posts: 15Member
    Seems I read somewhere that pulseaudio needed to be removed so that logging in was not required in order for Airtime to work?  This is not the case with Ubuntu Server 12.04 as I installed pulseaudio and all seems to be running after booting.  Could be I've not remembering this right.

    Anyway, the information at http://en.flossmanuals.net/airtime/preparing-the-server/ directs one to remove pulseaudio and install alsamixer.  Perhaps removing pulseaudio is no longer necessary. Though for a server I need a mixer that runs from the command line, and alsamixer works great for this.

    I don't mind having pulseaudio installed as long as this does not require more from CPU.  The current version of Airtime seems to work well on a netbook, not requiring too much processor time.  Older versions (1.8 - 1.9) would hang the netbook after a number of hours to a day and the CPU usage was higher.
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