New User – No Sound Odroid XU4

[gregb49]

I've installed 2 new users but cannot get any sound for them. Also I can only open Kodi from the terminal, not from the menu, using

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sudo kodi

but again there is no sound.
VLC reports that the audio device is “Dummy Output”.
I've run

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sudo /boot/dietpi/dietpi-config

in a terminal which reports that the audio device is “Default HDMI”, which is the same as for the root account.
I have not attached a USB sound device and the XU4 has no sound chip on board. However, sound works fine, over HDMI, if I log in as root, or as user dietpi, but not with a new user. There is a little background interference apparent when running Kodi. (I am concerned about running as root all the time.) Has this anything to do with having to use

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apt-mark hold uboot

with the current distribution as update upgrade breaks it? Alternatively, am I restricted to using the user “dietpi” at present?

[gregb49]

I'm interested in finding a small, low power consuming, low cost, desktop replacement and it seems that the ARM SBCs are ideal candidates. However, the Raspberry Pi seems just a little underpowered for this role, although it has a mature software base. The Intel NUC is just too expensive, IMO and, of course, isn't ARM based. See http://digitalanswers.info/ for my progress to date.
DietPi seems very well built and feature filled, but seems to suffer from similar problems to the current Odroid XU3/4 Ubuntu Mate build, in that Debian doesn't seem to support ARM well, as software updates seem to break distributions. Also, Ubuntu Mate doesn't play well with kernel 4.9.
I feel that devices similar to the XU4 will replace the bulky desktop hardware, in the near future, for people like me who are not power users and just want to be able to run office software, multimedia, print, use email and the web and basically want a utility computing device.
Maybe DietPi is aimed more at the expert user who is building a variety of projects, but I predict that the utility computing market will grow and DietPi is right at the forefront of any such growth. Am I right?

[gregb49]

Maybe the answer has already been posted by Fourdee, back in January, over at the Odroid Forums, under DietPi for Odroid XU3/4 https://forum.odroid.com/viewtopic.php? ... 00#p174750 where Fourdee says:

DietPi does not currently support underprivileged accounts for desktop at this time. This is due to the way we autostart the desktop and automatically login the root account, without the need for additional packages and resources.

This is something we may look at implementing in the future.

Do I take it from this Odroid post, that setting up a new user is not an avenue to be pursued at present?

[Fourdee]

Maybe the answer has already been posted by Fourdee, back in January, over at the Odroid Forums, under DietPi for Odroid XU3/4 https://forum.odroid.com/viewtopic.php? ... 00#p174750 where Fourdee says:

DietPi does not currently support underprivileged accounts for desktop at this time. This is due to the way we autostart the desktop and automatically login the root account, without the need for additional packages and resources.

This is something we may look at implementing in the future.

Do I take it from this Odroid post, that setting up a new user is not an avenue to be pursued at present?

Hi,

We are planning to change from Root to DietPi user in the future:
https://github.com/Fourdee/DietPi/issues/896

Might be a privilege issue, try the dietpi user:
user = dietpi
password = dietpi

[gregb49]

Thanks Fourdee, that would be the problem. dietpi user works fine (I thought I had tried that, but obviously not). To be investigated further or maybe I'll just experiment with the dietpi user.