auvoxware(1nas)

auvoxware1nas

Network audio system server for pcs with the voxware audio interface

Usage

auvoxware [:listen port offset] [-option ...]

Overview

auvoxware is the NAS server used on PC Unix platforms that support the VOXware device drivers for popular sound cards. It is able to discover what each device has in the way of ability and configure itself appropriately. The known list of platforms that support the VOXware interface are Linux, FreeBSD, SCO, Unixware and the generic SVR4.2 unixes.

Starting the server

The server is usually started from /etc/rc or a user's startup script.

When the Network Audio System server starts up, it takes over /dev/dsp & /dev/dsp1, according to the instructions in its configuration file, if any. Note that applications that attempt to access these devices themselves will fail while it is running. It will look for a configuration file of the name nasd.conf in the config directory, e.g. /etc/nas/nasd.conf. If it finds one, it will then open it and parse the contents, setting up the inputs and outputs as required.

Options

All of the Network Audio System servers accept the following command line options:

-aa

Allows clients on any host to connect. By default, access is allowed only to clients on the local host.

Signals

The Network Audio System server attaches special meaning to the following signals:

SIGHUP

This signal causes the server to close all existing connections, free all resources, and restore all defaults.

SIGTERM

This signal causes the server to exit cleanly.

SIGUSR1

This signal is used quite differently from either of the above. When the server starts, it checks to see if it has inherited SIGUSR1 as SIG_IGN instead of the usual SIG_DFL. In this case, the server sends a SIGUSR1 to its parent process after it has set up the various connection schemes.

Diagnostics

Too numerous to list them all. If run from init(8), errors are typically logged in the file /usr/adm/audio*msgs,

Files

/tmp/.sockets/audio*

Unix domain socket

/usr/adm/audio*msgs
/dev/audio

Audio device

Releases

5 releases since Debian 2.1 (Slink); the text changed 1 time.

  1. 2.1–2.2
  2. 3.0–4.0

Bugs

If au dies before its clients, new clients won't be able to connect until all existing connections have their TCP TIME_WAIT timers expire.

The current access control support is weak at best.

Authors

The auvoxware server contains much code from the sun sample server, written originally by Greg Renda and Dave Lemke of NCD, who in turn borrowed much code from the sample X server. The original VOXware server for Linux was written by Amancio Hasty ([email protected]) and was merged with the SVR4 VOXware server, written by Stephen Hocking ([email protected]). Christian Schlichtherle ([email protected]) then added some more Linux fixes, code to allow full duplex operation on those cards that supported it (GUS, PAS16, AudioTriX) and did some work on the 16 bit code. Stephen Hocking made sure it ran under FreeBSD. Shawn M. ([email protected]) fixed it up to run under SCO Unix and added code to dynamically adjust the buffer sizes. Stephen Hocking then added code for the server to use a configuration file.

The sample X server was originally written by Susan Angebranndt, Raymond Drewry, Philip Karlton, and Todd Newman, from Digital Equipment Corporation, with support from a large cast. It has since been extensively rewritten by Keith Packard and Bob Scheifler, from MIT.

From nas 1.8-4 in Debian 4.0 (Etch). Parsed by carta from the page's man source.