Here's an ALSA/KDE challenge.

CasimirEffect · Posted: Tue May 07, 2002 6:13 am Post subject: Here's an ALSA/KDE challenge.

This is my first run with Gentoo, so far I'm impressed. I have an Asus Nforce MB and have gotten KDE to run sound okay. KSCD and all other native KDE apps run flawlessly. XMMS and Chromium (and I'll asume other SDL games) are not cooperating, however. I can get Xmms to play with the OSS output plugin ( I compiled alsa-oss ) and it sounds good at first, but slowly loses quality. If I try to use the ALSA module it yells at me: "ALSA lib pcm_hw.c:795:(snd_pcm_hw_open) open /dev/snd/pcmC0D0p failed: Device or resource busy" Chromium has a similar problem: "open /dev/dsp: Device or resource busy" I suspect that this has something to do with devfs, though I'm not familiar enough with it to even start. I'm also having trouble getting my dxr3 to install the proper devices. The em8300 device script refuses to create devices because devfs is running, but devfs won't create the needed devices. Thanks in advance!

sven · Apprentice Joined: 19 Apr 2002 Posts: 274

No, this does not have something to with devfsd.
aRts, KDE's real time synthesizer which mixes sound outputs from different sound sources uses the /dev/dsp device.
You have to wait for aRts to automaticly shut down after 60 seconds of no usage (default value) or kill it manually with "killall artsd" if you want to use OSS output.
You can also use artsdsp to route sound output to aRts (artsdsp <program>) but this does not always work.

There is an aRts output plugin for XMMS (emerge xmms-arts).

Try "killall -HUP devfsd". This helped me when devfsd refused to create a new device.

CasimirEffect · Posted: Wed May 08, 2002 9:06 pm Post subject:

Thanks Sven! The aRts was indeed the problem. I turned off the KDE sound server all together and XMMS, Chromium, and Tribes2 now have perfect sound. My last distro was Mandrake 8.1 and I never had to worry about turning aRts off. Is there a way to get KDE to use ALSA instead of aRts?

kode54 · n00b Joined: 16 May 2002 Posts: 42

I can't get sound at all if I emerge chromium with OpenAL installed.

EDIT: Blah, it seems to bring in its own version of OpenAL, and seems to have a conflict with the version that comes from emerge openal.

Guest · Posted: Sun May 19, 2002 4:59 am Post subject:

artsd has the ability to use ALSA

kmenu -> preferences -> sound -> sound-server -> sound i/o tab -> method -> select "Advanced Linux Sound Architecture"

restart artsd

You can run OSS programs through artsd by the way, use 'artsdsp <name of program here>'

Some programs require -m to be used. have fun.

rac · Posted: Mon Aug 19, 2002 10:57 am Post subject:

Fled the crowds in Desktop Environments for the wide open spaces of the new Multimedia forum.
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rommel · Posted: Mon Aug 19, 2002 7:29 pm Post subject:

yes arts can use alsa, i had to though emerge arts again to get the option to be shown after installing alsa....but alsa and arts are a strange pairing....i am still not sure what is going on with the two of them.
after getting it going i had everything working fired up quake3 and no sound...shut down alsa and checked my modules.d/alsa config and update-modules then turned alsa back on. still no sound in quake3.
shutdown went running came back powered up kde boot music was gone but quake3 sound had magically appeared.
it would be nice since it will be included (alsa) in the future linus kerenls by default that it worked better with kde...or there was a mo betta desktop guide then 'here ad this to that'

capran · n00b Joined: 01 Apr 2003 Posts: 48

I'm having some serious issues with KDE locking up hard after playing sound (usually after about 20 secs, sometimes a little longer). Everything was beautiful until I decided that the kernel's i810 audio driver's 2 channel sound wasn't enough and wanted 5.1 using ALSA or OSS.

I have an Asus Nforce board (A7N266VM). I read the docs on the configuring ALSA page (http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/alsa-guide.xml) and followed them closely. Sound works fine from a console with mpg123 for instance. I can play a whole song without any problems.

But if I load up X (using gdm and KDE 3.1), it will seemingly randomly freeze up after playing a sound. Sometimes it does it after playing the KDE startup sound, sometimes it does it during playing a song with XMMS or XINE. But it will lock up.

Interestingly, I can still move the pointer, but the keyboard and all screen elements are locked (can't click anything, windows no longer update [like the VU meter in xmms], sound stops, and I can't do anything with the keyboard, even the caps lock/scroll lock/num lock keys won't light.) Its a MS Natural Pro connected VIA USB/PS2. The mouse is USB connected via the keyboard's hub. I'm using usb-ohci as the kernel module.

I can still ssh into the box though, and if I run top, X is at about 99+% CPU usage. I can kill -9 it, but it pops up again. After 4 or 5 kills, SOMETIMES gdm will come back up and I can log in again. Sometimes it doesn't, and the screen is all garbage, and can't switch to a console.

I'm using gaming-sources for my kernel (to have the new preemptive kernel or whatever its called, and supermount.) To use alsa and OSS I compiled soundcore and no other sound drivers.

The really messed up part is, I tried uninstalling ALSA and OSS (emerge --unmerge alsa, and alsa-xmms, and alsa-utils, and ran the uninstall script for OSS), but even after recompiling the kernel with built-in sound driver (i810), I'm still having the lock ups.

Any ideas?

EDIT:

I've tried killing artsd like someone said above, no good. Also it does it in Gnome as well and it never loads arts (KDE only?)

EDIT II:

I THINK I FOUND IT! It was ACPI, just passed acpi=off to the kernel, and I've been playing mp3s in KDE with no problem!! Strange that it only did it in X though.

curtis119 · Posted: Wed Apr 16, 2003 9:08 pm Post subject:

I have a via8233 built in card and tried (unsuccesfully) to use esd as my sound server. It seems the OSS/emulation layer in the ALSA via82xx is broken

I finally discovered this after TWO MONTHS of reading every document on the internet containing the words alsa esd esound oss via via82xx via82xxx_audio to no avail!!!!

Any app using the alsa driver natively has sound, xmms for instance. OSS apps don't, almost ALL games and of course, esd.

I'm currently emergeing arts to see if it can use the alsa drivers nativly. I've read very mixed reviews about this but nothing in particular about my card. If arts works under alsa I should be able to play any app with sound that doesn't use alsa nativly by using artsdsp as a wrapper, this includes esd! Of course, why would you want to use esd if arts works?

will report back.
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