compile firefox-esr (52) --enable-alsa ?

kapqa · 2020-03-05 11:33:16

Hello ,

i do use firefox as my main browser and would like to learn to compile it for use with alsa-only system.

it seems that the newer 52+ firefox require pulseaudio and also drop support for classic plugins.

this site here offers support on how to build firefox for linux desktop:

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/doc … reparation

when i choose to

python bootstrap.py

the error comes

python bootstrap.py
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "bootstrap.py", line 202, in <module>
sys.exit(main(sys.argv))
File "bootstrap.py", line 192, in main
vcs=options.vcs)
File "/tmp/tmp0LZZsZ/mozboot/bootstrap.py", line 268, in __init__

NotImplementedError: Bootstrap support for this Linux distro not yet available: devuan

any idea on how to compile firefox 52.9 - esr with alsa enabled on devuan?

thank yuo

Head_on_a_Stick · 2020-03-05 17:46:24

The Devuan firefox-esr packages are already compiled with the --enable-alsa option and sound works just fine without PA (or apulse).

Check the about:buildconfig page to confirm this (or test for sound without PA installed).

kapqa · 2020-03-05 20:17:04

Hello ,

thank you very much for your help.

is is possible to download the .deb for firefox-esr 52 with alsa enabled?
the version on devuan ascii is ff-esr 68+ but i would prefer to use an earlier version for compliance with legacy add-ons.
i think firefox-esr 52.9 is the last to support officially the legacy add-ions.

rolfie · 2020-03-05 20:28:30

https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/52.9.0esr/

rolfie

Head_on_a_Stick · 2020-03-05 21:01:29

kapqa wrote:

is is possible to download the .deb for firefox-esr 52 with alsa enabled?

http://archive.debian.org/debian/pool/m … refox-esr/

Not recommended though, old versions of FF are riddled with known security vulnerabilities. Your system will be wide open if you run those.

@rolfie: the Mozilla FF versions are not compiled with --enable-alsa. And they have user studies (embedded spyware) enabled by default, unlike the De??an packages.

Last edited by Head_on_a_Stick (2020-03-05 21:02:04)

mrnhmath · 2020-03-05 23:32:53

Forget Firefox 52, Basilisk will give you the same experience but with security fixes and improvements across the board.

czeekaj · 2020-03-08 03:54:57

I also heard Mozilla is trying to force a DNS on it's users like cloudflare
take a look here
https://securitytrails.com/blog/firefox … -resolvers

Last edited by czeekaj (2020-03-08 03:58:12)

golinux · 2020-03-08 03:59:08

Currently it can be disabled in about:config. But since I'm still on jessie, it's not a problem for me . . . yet. Cloudflare is a very-bad-idea (tm). There is a thread about this on the DNG mail list if you're interested.

czeekaj · 2020-03-08 04:02:16

Yes thank you. I had removed the fields in Network.trr* cells. Without any noticeable loss in functionality. I was really stoked I didn't have to re-compile firefox-esr myself though. I had no idea how to do so, and sound just started working again like magic.

Last edited by czeekaj (2020-03-08 04:07:05)

kapqa · 2020-03-15 12:59:22

hello ,

thank yo very much for your help.

today i downgraded to devuan jessie on my t60 laptop (the newer devuan/debian seems no longer to offer icedtea-plugin for java, needed for some playback on older websites)

now i have firefox 68.6.0esr (64-bit) ESR quantum? release

is it possible to use this browser also with alsa-only?

i don't think i will be able to use basilisk on here with devuan jessie;

normally i use firefox 52 esr + seamonkey + chromium (for netflix)
but the firefox 68 seems quite fast and most of the things i need seem to function.
sadly, the older plugins won't function, but quite a lot of add-ons have already been updated or adapted.

kapqa · 2020-03-15 13:07:42

it seems the firefox 68 provided by devuan is functioning with alsa only!

i still use this older guide here to remove pulseaudio with alsa

http://linuxg.net/how-to-properly-repla … n-squeeze/

problematic only is alsa a bit when i try to use an external usb soundcard, as it requires some effort to get this soundcard working;

with pulseaudio it is more elegant, just by installving pavucontrol one can easily manage several soundcards.

kapqa · 2020-03-15 13:11:14

mrnhmath wrote:

Forget Firefox 52, Basilisk will give you the same experience but with security fixes and improvements across the board.

thank you very much!
this seems a quite promising legacy browser!

hope it is also a safe one!
the only alternative to firefox seemed to me seamonkey, but some add-ons are not compatible with seamonkey.

kapqa · 2020-03-17 20:53:59

kapqa wrote:

it seems the firefox 68 provided by devuan is functioning with alsa only!
.

however,

on youtube it would not enable sound on my box beowulf with OpenH264 Video Codec?
i am using viewtube extension.

the firefox is 68.5.0esr (64-bit)

kapqa · 2020-03-17 21:20:48

Head_on_a_Stick wrote:

kapqa wrote:
is is possible to download the .deb for firefox-esr 52 with alsa enabled?
http://archive.debian.org/debian/pool/m … refox-esr/
Not recommended though, old versions of FF are riddled with known security vulnerabilities. Your system will be wide open if you run those.
@rolfie: the Mozilla FF versions are not compiled with --enable-alsa. And they have user studies (embedded spyware) enabled by default, unlike the De??an packages.

thank you for your help!

is it possible to

extract the contents of .amd64 deb file locally to achieve something like a local portable copy of firefox-esr instead of installing it directly onto the devuan/debian system?

bgstack15 · 2020-03-18 00:24:18

Er, yes, you can use dpkg-deb for that. This is not recommended, as noted above. But to extract the contents of a dpkg file (.deb), you can just

dpkg-deb -x file.deb /output/dir/here

You would probably have to add the extracted library path to ldconfig. So you would probably need a file, /etc/ld.so.conf.d/my-customized-firefox with contents:

/output/dir/here/usr/lib/

And then run ldconfig.
DISCLAIMER: I have not done this, and officially you shouldn't be doing this at all, for several reasons: 1) Super-old firefox. 2) Customizing your ld path is something you should do when you really, really know what you're doing and if you did, you probably didn't need our help for this task.

kapqa · 2020-03-18 09:50:52

thanks ,

i have tested now a bit with devuan jessie and beowulf,
and it seems that the

alsa

package is missing on both distros.

some things don't seem to function as they would on an older distro like

lubuntu 12.04

which is alsa-only.

when i try to playback audio in browser from this site here

http://www.gaia.com/

it would not play on my alsa-only devuan computer;
however, on the same computer, running lubuntu 12.04, the audio would play.
something is probably missing on the alsa-side, but i cannot see how to install the packages from the repo as alsa seems missing altogether.

rolfie · 2020-03-18 17:52:20

kapqa wrote:

i have tested now a bit with devuan jessie and beowulf,
and it seems that the
alsa
package is missing on both distros.

There is no alsa package, I think there never was. In older Debian versions a package alsa-base did exist, but this is depracated now.

ASCII shows:

# apt list alsa*
alsa-firmware-loaders/stable 1.1.3-1 amd64
alsa-oss/stable 1.0.28-1 amd64
alsa-tools/stable 1.1.3-1 amd64
alsa-tools-gui/stable 1.1.3-1 amd64
alsa-utils/stable,now 1.1.3-1 amd64  [Installiert,automatisch]
alsamixergui/stable,now 0.9.0rc2-1-10 amd64  [installiert]
alsaplayer-alsa/stable,now 0.99.81-2 amd64  [Installiert,automatisch]
alsaplayer-common/stable,now 0.99.81-2 amd64  [Installiert,automatisch]
alsaplayer-daemon/stable 0.99.81-2 amd64
alsaplayer-gtk/stable,now 0.99.81-2 amd64  [installiert]
alsaplayer-jack/stable 0.99.81-2 amd64
alsaplayer-nas/stable 0.99.81-2 amd64
alsaplayer-oss/stable 0.99.81-2 amd64
alsaplayer-text/stable 0.99.81-2 amd64
alsaplayer-xosd/stable 0.99.81-2 amd64
# apt list apulse*
Auflistung... Fertig
apulse/stable,now 0.1.9-6 amd64  [installiert]

The list on Beowulf is similar with newer versions partially. All you need is alsa-utils, alsamixergui and apulse to make FF play sound with alsa.

Good luck, rolfie

kapqa · 2020-03-18 20:13:41

rolfie wrote:

[. All you need is alsa-utils, alsamixergui and apulse to make FF play sound with alsa.
Good luck, rolfie

Thank you very much, forgot quite about apulse.

on devuan jessie it is not available, but on beowulf i could install it;

however, the audio would still not get through.

[Parent 12543, Gecko_IOThread] WARNING: pipe error: Broken pipe: file /build/firefox-esr-MzCYU7/firefox-esr-68.6.0esr/ipc/chromium/src/chrome/common/ipc_channel_posix.cc, line 727
[apulse] [error] do_connect_pcm: can't set sample format 14 ("FLOAT_LE") for playback device "default". Error code -22 (Invalid argument)
[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.
[Child 12599, MediaPlayback #3] WARNING: 7fe728d35bb0 OpenCubeb() failed to init cubeb: file /build/firefox-esr-MzCYU7/firefox-esr-68.6.0esr/dom/media/AudioStream.cpp, line 382
[Child 12599, MediaPlayback #3] WARNING: Decoder=7fe723749200 [OnMediaSinkAudioError]: file /build/firefox-esr-MzCYU7/firefox-esr-68.6.0esr/dom/media/MediaDecoderStateMachine.cpp, line 3639
[apulse] [error] do_connect_pcm: can't open playback device "default". Error code -16 (Device or resource busy)
[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.
[Child 12599, MediaPlayback #3] WARNING: 7fe715fd7ef0 OpenCubeb() failed to init cubeb: file /build/firefox-esr-MzCYU7/firefox-esr-68.6.0esr/dom/media/AudioStream.cpp, line 382
[Child 12599, MediaPlayback #3] WARNING: Decoder=7fe723749200 [OnMediaSinkAudioError]: file /build/firefox-esr-MzCYU7/firefox-esr-68.6.0esr/dom/media/MediaDecoderStateMachine.cpp, line 3639

Head_on_a_Stick · 2020-03-18 20:44:08

rolfie wrote:

All you need is alsa-utils, alsamixergui and apulse to make FF play sound with alsa.

The firefox-esr packages supplied by Devuan do not need apulse to produce sound with pure ALSA.

kapqa · 2020-03-18 20:58:52

maybe this has not been playing because alsa is picking the internal HDMI as the choice 0
and snd_intel_audio as choice 1

after deleting .asoundrc (that was used for selecting a usb soundcard)
and changing the order of sound cards as here
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Ad … sound_card

the sound would play.

The officially official Devuan Forum!

#1 2020-03-05 11:33:16

compile firefox-esr (52) --enable-alsa ?

#2 2020-03-05 17:46:24

Re: compile firefox-esr (52) --enable-alsa ?

#3 2020-03-05 20:17:04

Re: compile firefox-esr (52) --enable-alsa ?

#4 2020-03-05 20:28:30

Re: compile firefox-esr (52) --enable-alsa ?

#5 2020-03-05 21:01:29

Re: compile firefox-esr (52) --enable-alsa ?

#6 2020-03-05 23:32:53

Re: compile firefox-esr (52) --enable-alsa ?

#7 2020-03-08 03:54:57

Re: compile firefox-esr (52) --enable-alsa ?

#8 2020-03-08 03:59:08

Re: compile firefox-esr (52) --enable-alsa ?

#9 2020-03-08 04:02:16

Re: compile firefox-esr (52) --enable-alsa ?

#10 2020-03-15 12:59:22

Re: compile firefox-esr (52) --enable-alsa ?

#11 2020-03-15 13:07:42

Re: compile firefox-esr (52) --enable-alsa ?

#12 2020-03-15 13:11:14

Re: compile firefox-esr (52) --enable-alsa ?

#13 2020-03-17 20:53:59

Re: compile firefox-esr (52) --enable-alsa ?

#14 2020-03-17 21:20:48

Re: compile firefox-esr (52) --enable-alsa ?

#15 2020-03-18 00:24:18

Re: compile firefox-esr (52) --enable-alsa ?

#16 2020-03-18 09:50:52

Re: compile firefox-esr (52) --enable-alsa ?

#17 2020-03-18 17:52:20

Re: compile firefox-esr (52) --enable-alsa ?

#18 2020-03-18 20:13:41

Re: compile firefox-esr (52) --enable-alsa ?

#19 2020-03-18 20:44:08

Re: compile firefox-esr (52) --enable-alsa ?

#20 2020-03-18 20:58:52

Re: compile firefox-esr (52) --enable-alsa ?

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