ALSA

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Newsgroups:  gmane.linux.debian.user
Date:        Thu, 2 Sep 2004 15:29:26 -0400 (EDT)

I've seen a number of people complaining about alsa not loading properly recently.

I too had that problem. OSS worked, but ALSA didn't.

After much searching and experimentation here is the solution:

ALSA will not load if OSS is alrady loaded.

If you are using a stock 2.6 kernel OSS and ALSA are both enabled, and OSS will try to load first.

There are two places to try to prevent this behavior without having to recompile your kernel with OSS disabled.

The first is /etc/hotplug/blacklist add a line with just the name of the OSS version of the sound driver module for your soundcard/chipset. (in my case, since mine is an AC97 compatible chipset it was "i810_audio")

The second is /etc/discover.conf add a skip line for your OSS module (in my case it was "skip i810_audio")

This should prevent the system from discovering it as well as prevent hotplug from loading it later in the bootup process.

Best of luck to all those who were having ALSA troubles.

Rod MacPherson

ALSA

>The first is /etc/hotplug/blacklist add a line with just the name of
>the OSS version of the sound driver module for your soundcard/chipset.
>(in my case, since mine is an AC97 compatible chipset it was
>"i810_audio")

The package alsa-base comes with the file /etc/hotplug/blacklist.d/alsa-base I guess that if that file doesn't take care of your problems with getting hotplug to leave out OSS modules then you should bug report.

>The second is /etc/discover.conf add a skip line for your OSS module
>(in my case it was "skip i810_audio")

Ah, cool. I removed the discover package to get my ALSA working. This would have been a cleaner solution.

>This should prevent the system from discovering it as well as prevent
>hotplug from loading it later in the bootup process.

These two packages seem to overlap, don't they? Hotplug is pulled in due to udev and seems to do a bit of discovery, what is left for discover to do? (My system seems to work just fine with only hotplug + udev.) Will there be more magic is both are installed?

One other note. I recently had a problem with hotplug and ALSA, this was due to hotplug thinking that I needed the snd_usb_audio module inserted. I haven't got a clue why it all of a sudden started thinking that! Adding it to the blacklist took care of the problem.

Magnus Therning

ALSA

> Best of luck to all those who were having ALSA troubles.

I've tried this, at least in part, with no luck.

I'm not too big on rebooting my computer all the time, so I've unloaded all the ac97_codec and related modules (snd, sound, soundcore, i810_audio) for my system. I've installed the alsa-base and alsa-utils packages and have the /etc/hotplug/blacklist file in place.

I've run alsaconf and alsactl restore and they return: alsactl: load_state:1134: No soundcards found…

Even though the alsaconf script did find a valid sound card. alsactl: load_state:1134: No soundcards found…

lspci indicates (which is what alsa conf found as well) 0000:00:06.0 Multimedia audio controller: nVidia Corporation nForce2 AC97 Audio Controler (MCP) (rev a1)

Nothing seems to load them up.

I can try rebooting when I get the chance, but that might be in a day or so… I don't like using the Windows approach on a Linux machine.

ALSA —> Problem solved by "rm /etc/modprobe.conf"

> If you are using a stock 2.6 kernel OSS and ALSA are both enabled,
> and OSS will try to load first.

Well but this just avoided the issue. I was scratching my head few days ago too :-) My short story:

2.6 upgrade, sound was OK with OSS

udev and ALSA upgrade —> no /dev/dsp i.e. no sound

ii  udev           0.031-2        /dev/ management daemon
ii  kernel-image-2 2.6.8-2        Linux kernel image for version 2.6 on PPro/C
ii  kernel-image-2 2.6.8-2        Linux kernel image for version 2.6.8 on PPro
ii  alsa-base      1.0.5a-3       ALSA sound driver common files
ii  alsa-utils     1.0.5-3        Advanced Linux Sound Architecture (utilities

My solution: * remove /etc/modprobe.conf which was empty file

Reason: As mentioned in MODPROBE.CONF(5)


	If the file /etc/modprobe.conf exists, all contents of /etc/mod- probe.d/ are ignored by default. It is up to the system administrator to keep them in sync, either using a tool to concenate files /etc/mod- probe.d/ and write /etc/modprobe.conf or using include statements to share the configuration data (see below).

Somehow I had empty /etc/modprobe.conf which prevented hotplug/udev to read files in /etc/modprobe.d/ . See http://bugs.debian.org/271763

So now I have my system back :-)

ALSA —> Problem solved by "rm /etc/modprobe.conf"

> My solution:
> * remove /etc/modprobe.conf which was empty file

he current alsaconf creates an empty /etc/modprobe.conf file. This bug is fixed in CVS.

Thomas Hood