Debian Alsa

Debian Alsa

[Zachary Kline]

Hiya,
    While I was finally able to get my Dectalk Express to work properly and provide hardware synthesis for Speakup, I've noticed that Alsa seems to enjoy being a real pain to configure on Debian.  For some reason, when I've booted, I've noticed that /dev/mixer, among other things, isn't being created.  I would think that Udev could do that?  Not to mention /dev/dsp and all...
    Is there something fairly simple I'm missing?
Thanks,
Zack.

Re: Debian Alsa

[Samuel Thibault]

Hi,

Zachary Kline, le Tue 05 Jun 2007 14:30:07 -0700, a écrit :
>     For some reason, when I've booted, I've noticed that /dev/mixer, among other things, isn't being created.  I would think that Udev could do that?  Not to mention /dev/dsp and all...
>     Is there something fairly simple I'm missing?

Alsa doesn't provide these :) You should rather have a look at
/dev/snd/, it's all there.

Samuel

Re: Debian Alsa

[Adam Myrow]

On Tue, 5 Jun 2007, Zachary Kline wrote:

>    Is there something fairly simple I'm missing?

Probably.  Are you loading snd_pcm_oss, snd_mixer_oss, and possibly 
snd_seq_oss?  I can't believe that Debian doesn't load Alsa modules 
automatically!  Even Slackware does that.  BTW, to get Mplayer to use Alsa 
by default, add this to your .mplayer/config.

ao=alsa

First, make sure that Mplayer supports Alsa by running the command 
"mplayer -ao help" which will show what audio devices are compiled in.

Re: Debian Alsa

[Samuel Thibault]

Adam Myrow, le Tue 05 Jun 2007 18:45:43 -0500, a écrit :
> On Tue, 5 Jun 2007, Zachary Kline wrote:
> 
> >    Is there something fairly simple I'm missing?
> 
> Probably.  Are you loading snd_pcm_oss, snd_mixer_oss, and possibly 
> snd_seq_oss?  I can't believe that Debian doesn't load Alsa modules 
> automatically!

These are only compatibility layers that really shouldn't be needed
nowadays...

Samuel

Re: Debian Alsa

[Zachary Kline]

Hello,
    I didn't load any of these modules explicitly.  I notice that when I 
modprobe snd, however, all the problems seem to go away: /dev/mixer and 
/dev/snd/ are created, etc.  I don't know why it didn't do this for me...
    As for mplayer, thanks for the tip.  It's very useful.
Yours,
Zack.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Adam Myrow" <myrowa@bellsouth.net>
To: "Speakup is a screen review system for Linux." <speakup@braille.uwo.ca>
Sent: Tuesday, June 05, 2007 4:45 PM
Subject: Re: Debian Alsa


> On Tue, 5 Jun 2007, Zachary Kline wrote:
>
>>    Is there something fairly simple I'm missing?
>
> Probably.  Are you loading snd_pcm_oss, snd_mixer_oss, and possibly
> snd_seq_oss?  I can't believe that Debian doesn't load Alsa modules
> automatically!  Even Slackware does that.  BTW, to get Mplayer to use Alsa
> by default, add this to your .mplayer/config.
>
> ao=alsa
>
> First, make sure that Mplayer supports Alsa by running the command
> "mplayer -ao help" which will show what audio devices are compiled in.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> 

Re: Debian Alsa

[Gregory Nowak]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

On Tue, Jun 05, 2007 at 06:45:43PM -0500, Adam Myrow wrote:
> I can't believe that Debian doesn't load Alsa modules 
> automatically!  Even Slackware does that.

Provided you have udev installed, debian does in fact load necessary
sound modules for your hardware when it gets detected, that's been my
experience at least. The only exception I've seen to that so far is on
a very old laptop, with an isa, non-pnp sound system.

Greg


- -- 
web site: http://www.romuald.net.eu.org
gpg public key: http://www.romuald.net.eu.org/pubkey.asc
skype: gregn1
(authorization required, add me to your contacts list first)

- --
Free domains: http://www.eu.org/ or mail dns-manager@EU.org
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux)

iD8DBQFGZgel7s9z/XlyUyARArtjAKDaIlXPDorLgef8xEgN1qEL++NyIgCfQQ+2
WRKvSXOrp/fgTBr/UYy7OQ4=
=y2y3
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

Re: Debian Alsa

[Zachary Kline]

Hello,
    Upon some checking, I found that the /etc/modules file contained snd.
    I removed that from the file and the Udev loading apparently did the 
rest.  I get working alsa support now.
Thanks,
Zack.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Gregory Nowak" <greg@romuald.net.eu.org>
To: "Speakup is a screen review system for Linux." <speakup@braille.uwo.ca>
Sent: Tuesday, June 05, 2007 6:02 PM
Subject: Re: Debian Alsa


> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> On Tue, Jun 05, 2007 at 06:45:43PM -0500, Adam Myrow wrote:
>> I can't believe that Debian doesn't load Alsa modules
>> automatically!  Even Slackware does that.
>
> Provided you have udev installed, debian does in fact load necessary
> sound modules for your hardware when it gets detected, that's been my
> experience at least. The only exception I've seen to that so far is on
> a very old laptop, with an isa, non-pnp sound system.
>
> Greg
>
>
> - -- 
> web site: http://www.romuald.net.eu.org
> gpg public key: http://www.romuald.net.eu.org/pubkey.asc
> skype: gregn1
> (authorization required, add me to your contacts list first)
>
> - --
> Free domains: http://www.eu.org/ or mail dns-manager@EU.org
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
> Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux)
>
> iD8DBQFGZgel7s9z/XlyUyARArtjAKDaIlXPDorLgef8xEgN1qEL++NyIgCfQQ+2
> WRKvSXOrp/fgTBr/UYy7OQ4=
> =y2y3
> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
>
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> 

Re: Debian Alsa

[Adam Myrow]

On Wed, 6 Jun 2007, Samuel Thibault wrote:

> These are only compatibility layers that really shouldn't be needed
> nowadays...

Well, many programs still use them by default.  For example, some have 
discussed aumix as a mixer program.  It uses /dev/mixer, which is why it 
doesn't show all controls.  Most programs, including Mplayer still default 
to OSS-compatible operation unless overridden.  So, until this changes, I 
consider the OSS emulation mandatory.  There is the aoss command, which 
tries to make a program that would normally use OSS use ALSA instead, but 
it doesn't always work.