alsa 0.9.3a problems with ymfpci

[painlessrob]

Just FAWI, installing alsa-drivers-0.9.3a caused snd-ymfpci to segfault on my Toshiba Satellite Pro 4300. The sound card is (grep audio /proc/pci) Yamaha Corporation YMF-744B [DS-1S Audio Controller] (rev 2).

/etc/init.d/alsasound start would load the other snd-* modules would load correctly, but snd-ymfpci would be constantly initialising, and could not be unloaded.

I'm running the linux-2.4.20-gaming-r3 kernel. It had been fine with 0.9.2 on linux-2.4.20-gentoo-r3, but after I changed the kernel to linux-2.4.20-gaming-r3, I ran the recommended emerge alsa-driver, got automagically upgraded to 0.9.3a and that's where the problems started.

I initially thought it was the new kernel. I think there are some alsa additions to that kernel. I had a week of kernel rebuilds, unmerging and re emerging alsa, and was on the verge of going to OSS -- gnome rebuild? -- when I thought I'd try the older drivers (0.9.2), long shot, they get better with each release, etc, and it worked.

BTW, anyone wishing to try the older drivers, using:

emerge alsa-drivers-0.9.2

failed. I had to specify

emerge /usr/portage/media-sound/alsa-driver/alsa-driver-0.9.2.ebuild

and so on for all the other packages.

The actual package combination I am using is:

media-libs/alsa-lib-0.9.2 *
media-libs/alsa-oss-0.9.1 *
media-sound/alsa-utils-0.9.2 *
media-sound/alsa-driver-0.9.2 *

I hope this helps anyone with the same or similar problems as me.

Rob