Bug#857050: firefox no longer plays sound without pulseaudio daemon

Tue Mar 7 14:04:47 UTC 2017

Package: firefox
Version: 52.0~b9-1
Severity: important

Dear Maintainer,

*** Reporter, please consider answering these questions, where appropriate ***

   * What led up to the situation?

Firefox developers apparently changed the default build to no longer
supporting sound output except for pulseaudio, which silences firefox on
Debian-based systems that chose not to start a pulseaudio daemon as main
sound system. See https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1247056 .

   * What exactly did you do (or not do) that was effective (or
     ineffective)?

Starting firefox with an arbitrary sound-playing (HTML5) website, like
youtube, on a Debian system without installed and configured pulseaudio
package.

   * What was the outcome of this action?

firefox does not play sound.

   * What outcome did you expect instead?

Working sound over ALSA like in previous firefox versions.

*** End of the template - remove these template lines ***

Additional information / proposal: Just adding a hard dependency on
pulseaudio to the firefox package does not solve the problem, since
daemon mode can still be disabled via /etc/pulseaudio.conf. firefox
should instead be compile-time configured to keep supporting ALSA output
on Debian for keeping compatibility with non-pulseaudio setups.

-- Package-specific info:

-- Extensions information
Name: Adblock Plus
Location: /usr/share/xul-ext/adblock-plus
Package: xul-ext-adblock-plus
Status: enabled

Name: Application Update Service Helper
Location: ${PROFILE_EXTENSIONS}/aushelper at mozilla.org.xpi
Status: enabled

Name: Deutsch (DE) Language Pack locale
Location: /usr/lib/firefox/browser/extensions/langpack-de at firefox.mozilla.org.xpi
Package: firefox-l10n-de
Status: enabled

Name: FoxyProxy Standard
Location: /usr/share/xul-ext/foxyproxy-standard
Package: xul-ext-foxyproxy-standard
Status: enabled

Name: Multi-process staged rollout
Location: ${PROFILE_EXTENSIONS}/e10srollout at mozilla.org.xpi
Status: enabled

Name: NoScript
Location: /usr/share/xul-ext/noscript
Package: xul-ext-noscript
Status: enabled

Name: Pocket
Location: ${PROFILE_EXTENSIONS}/firefox at getpocket.com.xpi
Status: enabled

Name: Standard theme
Location: /usr/lib/firefox/browser/extensions/{972ce4c6-7e08-4474-a285-3208198ce6fd}.xpi
Package: firefox
Status: enabled

Name: Video DownloadHelper
Location: ${PROFILE_EXTENSIONS}/{b9db16a4-6edc-47ec-a1f4-b86292ed211d}.xpi
Status: enabled

Name: Web Compat
Location: ${PROFILE_EXTENSIONS}/webcompat at mozilla.org.xpi
Status: enabled

-- Plugins information

-- Addons package information
ii  firefox        52.0~b9-1    i386         Mozilla Firefox web browser
ii  firefox-l10n-d 52.0~b9-1    all          German language package for Firef
ii  xul-ext-adbloc 2.6.10+dfsg- all          advertisement blocking extension 
ii  xul-ext-foxypr 4.5.6-debian all          advanced proxy management tool fo
ii  xul-ext-noscri 2.9.0.14-1   all          permissions manager for Firefox

-- System Information:
Debian Release: stretch/sid
  APT prefers stable
  APT policy: (990, 'stable'), (500, 'stable-updates'), (500, 'unstable'), (500, 'testing'), (1, 'experimental')
Architecture: i386 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 4.10.0-64 (SMP w/4 CPU cores; PREEMPT)
Locale: LANG=de_DE.UTF-8.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=de_DE.UTF-8.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8) (ignored: LC_ALL set to de_DE.UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash
Init: sysvinit (via /sbin/init)

Versions of packages firefox depends on:
ii  debianutils               4.5.1
ii  fontconfig                2.11.0-6.3
ii  libatk1.0-0               2.16.0-2
ii  libc6                     2.24-5
ii  libcairo-gobject2         1.14.8-1
ii  libcairo2                 1.14.8-1
ii  libdbus-1-3               1.10.12-1
ii  libdbus-glib-1-2          0.102-1
ii  libevent-2.0-5            2.0.21-stable-2
ii  libffi6                   3.2.1-3
ii  libfontconfig1            2.11.0-6.7
ii  libfreetype6              2.6-1
ii  libgcc1                   1:5.2.1-17
ii  libgdk-pixbuf2.0-0        2.36.4-1
ii  libglib2.0-0              2.50.2-2
ii  libgtk-3-0                3.22.7-2
ii  libgtk2.0-0               2.24.31-2
ii  libhunspell-1.4-0         1.4.1-2+b1
ii  libnspr4                  2:4.12-6
ii  libnss3                   2:3.29.1-1
ii  libpango-1.0-0            1.40.3-3
ii  libsqlite3-0              3.8.11.1-1
ii  libstartup-notification0  0.12-4
ii  libstdc++6                6.2.0-11
ii  libvpx4                   1.6.0-2
ii  libx11-6                  2:1.6.4-3
ii  libx11-xcb1               2:1.6.3-1
ii  libxcb-shm0               1.10-3+b1
ii  libxcb1                   1.12-1
ii  libxcomposite1            1:0.4.4-1
ii  libxdamage1               1:1.1.4-2+b1
ii  libxext6                  2:1.3.3-1
ii  libxfixes3                1:5.0.1-2+b2
ii  libxrender1               1:0.9.8-1+b1
ii  libxt6                    1:1.1.4-1+b1
ii  procps                    2:3.3.9-9
ii  zlib1g                    1:1.2.8.dfsg-2+b1

firefox recommends no packages.

Versions of packages firefox suggests:
ii  fonts-lmodern          2.004.4-5
pn  fonts-stix | otf-stix  <none>
ii  libcanberra0           0.30-2.1
ii  libgssapi-krb5-2       1.14.3+dfsg-2
pn  mozplugger             <none>

-- no debconf information