FAQ

/*
*
* The orpheus FAQ (frequently asked questions)
* by Konstantin Klyagin <konst@konst.org.ua>
*
* $Id: FAQ,v 1.1 2003/10/31 07:30:46 konst Exp $
*
*/

Q: When running orpheus in X, I experience short blips or skips when
switching between windows and tabs. How can I get rid of this?

A: (by Justin Rebelo) All of the testing I have done has seemed to show
that this problem is due to the way linux handles the prioritization of
tasks. The and project (auto nice daemon) is meant to deal with such
problems by forcing the nice levels of running tasks. Unfortunately, it
seems only to handle the PRI (priority) levels and therefore does not
fix the problem. If you can get the problem solved using this method,
please email me and let me know how you did it.

That said, I have found that by either giving X a higher NI (nice)
level (of approximately five points) it will stop interfering with
mpg123 (or 321 as the case may be). Because this will cause X to step
aside for all sorts of applications, it is probably more desirable to
decrease the niceness of mpg123/321 to cause it to take a high priority
over X. Again, unfortunately, I have not been able to find any
reasonable way to do this because only root is allowed to modify nice
levels. Yes, I am working toward a solution.

The solution. This is not the most pleasant answer, but it works. With
any luck, you already have sudo installed. If not, it's pretty good to
have installed anyways. Create a sudo permission to give access to
either your user or all users, or whatever on earth you like, and give
that account password-free access to /usr/bin/nice. Once that's done,
all you have to do is create a small script like so:

#!/bin/bash
sudo /usr/bin/nice -n -5 /usr/bin/mpg321 -R - $1
# EOF

Make this script executable and put it somewhere in your path. I keep
small scripts such as this in ~/bin. FINALLY, go into orpheus and
(c)onfigure. Set the Command line setting to the name of this script.
DONE.