Gentoo Studio: A Gentoo Linux Professional Audio Workstation

Message

audiodef · Post by **audiodef** » Tue Jul 24, 2012 7:24 pm

I have completely revamped my pro-audio for Gentoo guide. It is now called Gentoo Studio, and is a complete, stand-alone guide for installing Gentoo from scratch for the purpose of creating a professional digital audio workstation.

Gentoo Studio has its own site: http://gentoostudio.org.

Please post to this thread for help or questions.

Gentoo Studio is an unofficial, community-driven project. The name "Gentoo" is a trademark of the Gentoo Foundation, Inc.

Gentoo Studio now has a Mantis installation for reporting bugs and requesting features. Please visit https://bugs.gentoostudio.org. Feel free to sign up and report issues and add features you'd like to see. Please try to make sure that anything you report isn't a pure Gentoo issue - "bugs" should be along the lines of "you said x was installed but it isn't there," and features should be along the lines of "I want a better/different way to update my system than x." Please keep in mind that this is all just me and nobody else at the other end of the line, so responses may not be super-zippy.

Stuck by NeddySeagoon
I'm not sure that Unsupported Software might be better as this will not officially be supported by Gentoo, but leave it here for now

audiodef · Post by **audiodef** » Fri Jul 27, 2012 12:59 pm

Coming soon: a set of scripts to speed installation and setup along!

audiodef · Post by **audiodef** » Wed Aug 01, 2012 12:16 pm

Also coming soon: a stage4 installation (not with genkernel, though, as part of the purpose of all this is to avoid that and make the installation as resource-efficient as possible, working with your specific hardware).

audiodef · Post by **audiodef** » Fri Aug 10, 2012 5:52 pm

The stage4 installation tarball is complete and ready for public testing. Please go to http://audiodef.com/projects.php?project_id=1 and follow the instructions under Installation Method A: Stage4. Please post comments and feedback to this thread.

The stage4 installation is the most recommended way to set up Gentoo Studio, because I've already worked out a lot of kinks and gotten stuff working where installation might not have been so straightforward, including a regular user account with real-time priorities under which to run JACK and other audio programs.

It is my intention to update the tarball on a monthly basis, but as I have been accepted into graduate school, if I can figure out how to pay for it, things might get very busy for me. Regardless, this project is important to me and I will do the best I can to be responsive and helpful to anyone trying it out.

Have fun!

Xywa · Post by **Xywa** » Mon Aug 13, 2012 12:57 pm

audiodef wrote:I have completely revamped my pro-audio for Gentoo guide. It is now called Gentoo Studio, and is a complete, stand-alone guide for installing Gentoo from scratch

It is possible to made any changes in my ~amd64 to have Gentoo Studio?

audiodef · Post by **audiodef** » Mon Aug 13, 2012 1:13 pm

Do you mean convert your existing Gentoo setup for pro-audio use (MIDI, recording/editing audio in real-time, etc.)? Yes, certainly. Just follow these sections in the DIY guide:

Configuring the kernel (copy the new kernel image to your boot partition after backing up the old one)
Configuring audio settings
Setting up a working environment (I assume you have xorg installed, so pick a lightweight DE or a WM you like)
Installing audio & MIDI programs
Testing your system

Just let me know if you have any questions.

aCOSwt · Post by **aCOSwt** » Mon Aug 13, 2012 1:23 pm

Hello audiodef. Nice work you achieved.

Any plan regarding a dssi-vst how-to with an acceptable result ?

xaviermiller · Post by **xaviermiller** » Mon Aug 13, 2012 1:35 pm

Nice. I will take a look at your site.

Spidey · Post by **Spidey** » Wed Aug 15, 2012 8:04 pm

A friend of mine needs a working driver for the M-Audio Fast Track Pro. There is some steps for Debian with kernel 3.2.16. Do you know anything about theses patches? He sent me this link: http://joegiampaoli.blogspot.com.br/201 ... linux.html

xaviermiller · Post by **xaviermiller** » Thu Aug 16, 2012 6:58 am

Hello,

You will find all the information at the ALSA Project page : http://alsa-project.org/main/index.php/Matrix:Main

In fact, this card is not really well supported by Linux.

audiodef · Post by **audiodef** » Thu Aug 16, 2012 3:21 pm

aCOSwt wrote:Hello audiodef. Nice work you achieved.

Any plan regarding a dssi-vst how-to with an acceptable result ?

Thanks! Yes, eventually. Depending on how much interest this thing gets, I may split off a new domain for it and give it its own forums where users can contribute tricks, tips and how-to's specific to using Gentoo Studio. I'm just moving it ahead one step at a time.

audiodef · Post by **audiodef** » Thu Aug 16, 2012 3:22 pm

XavierMiller wrote:Nice. I will take a look at your site.

Thank you.

Post by **NeddySeagoon** » Sat Aug 18, 2012 11:53 am

/Me checks in

audiodef · Post by **audiodef** » Fri Aug 24, 2012 7:51 pm

Thanks for the sticky, Neddy.

One of my machines decided to go on holiday without leave, so I decided to back up my data and use it as a physical test machine for the stage4. What I noticed is that formatting seems to fail in the disk setup script, but if I manually perform the steps exactly as they are in the script, there is no problem.

If anyone can think of why, I would appreciate the advice. Seems puzzling to me.

audiodef · Post by **audiodef** » Tue Oct 02, 2012 5:59 pm

I've taken down the stage4 tarball from my server because it's a small hosted virtual machine and I'm getting low on space.

This does NOT mean Gentoo Studio is in any danger of going away!

Until I configure a server with a larger disk at home to host the tarball, please PM me if you want it and I'll get it to you directly.

strickrodt · Post by **strickrodt** » Fri Nov 02, 2012 3:48 pm

thx for the very helpfull description, nobody can explain me this before on a better way.

audiodef · Post by **audiodef** » Sat Nov 03, 2012 3:33 pm

strickrodt wrote:thx for the very helpfull description, nobody can explain me this before on a better way.

That really made my day. Thanks!

audiodef · Post by **audiodef** » Wed Nov 07, 2012 4:13 pm

Qjackctl (0.3.8, 0.3.9 and 9999) require qt-xmlpatterns, or it will fail with the error described here. These are the modified ebuilds. Drop them into your local overlay to use. I have only tested compilation of 0.3.8, so please let me know if 0.3.9 or 9999 still fail with the above-mentioned error.

0.3.8:

Code: Select all

# Copyright 1999-2012 Gentoo Foundation
# Distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License v2
# $Header: /var/cvsroot/gentoo-x86/media-sound/qjackctl/qjackctl-0.3.8.ebuild,v 1.4 2012/03/28 09:59:00 ago Exp $

EAPI=4

inherit qt4-r2

DESCRIPTION="A Qt application to control the JACK Audio Connection Kit and ALSA sequencer connections."
HOMEPAGE="http://qjackctl.sourceforge.net/"
SRC_URI="mirror://sourceforge/qjackctl/${P}.tar.gz"

LICENSE="GPL-2"
SLOT="0"
KEYWORDS="amd64 ~x86"

IUSE="alsa dbus debug portaudio"

RDEPEND="
        >=media-sound/jack-audio-connection-kit-0.109.2
        x11-libs/qt-core:4
        x11-libs/qt-gui:4
        x11-libs/qt-xmlpatterns
        alsa? ( media-libs/alsa-lib )
        dbus? ( x11-libs/qt-dbus:4 )
        portaudio? ( media-libs/portaudio )"
DEPEND="${RDEPEND}"

DOCS="AUTHORS ChangeLog README TODO TRANSLATORS"

src_configure() {
        econf \
                $(use_enable alsa alsa-seq) \
                $(use_enable dbus) \
                $(use_enable debug) \
                $(use_enable portaudio)

        # Emulate what the Makefile does, so that we can get the correct
        # compiler used.
        eqmake4 ${PN}.pro -o ${PN}.mak
}

src_compile() {
        emake -f ${PN}.mak
        lupdate ${PN}.pro || die "lupdate failed"

0.3.9:

Code: Select all

# Copyright 1999-2012 Gentoo Foundation
# Distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License v2
# $Header: /var/cvsroot/gentoo-x86/media-sound/qjackctl/qjackctl-0.3.9.ebuild,v 1.1 2012/05/21 15:24:00 aballier Exp $

EAPI=4

inherit qt4-r2

DESCRIPTION="A Qt application to control the JACK Audio Connection Kit and ALSA sequencer connections."
HOMEPAGE="http://qjackctl.sourceforge.net/"
SRC_URI="mirror://sourceforge/qjackctl/${P}.tar.gz"

LICENSE="GPL-2"
SLOT="0"
KEYWORDS="~amd64 ~x86"

IUSE="alsa dbus debug portaudio"

RDEPEND="
        >=media-sound/jack-audio-connection-kit-0.109.2
        x11-libs/qt-core:4
        x11-libs/qt-gui:4
        x11-libs/qt-xmlpatterns
        alsa? ( media-libs/alsa-lib )
        dbus? ( x11-libs/qt-dbus:4 )
        portaudio? ( media-libs/portaudio )"
DEPEND="${RDEPEND}"

DOCS="AUTHORS ChangeLog README TODO TRANSLATORS"

src_configure() {
        econf \
                $(use_enable alsa alsa-seq) \
                $(use_enable dbus) \
                $(use_enable debug) \
                $(use_enable portaudio)

        # Emulate what the Makefile does, so that we can get the correct
        # compiler used.
        eqmake4 ${PN}.pro -o ${PN}.mak
}

src_compile() {
        emake -f ${PN}.mak
        lupdate ${PN}.pro || die "lupdate failed"
}

9999:

Code: Select all

# Copyright 1999-2012 Gentoo Foundation
# Distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License v2
# $Header: /var/cvsroot/gentoo-x86/media-sound/qjackctl/qjackctl-0.3.9.ebuild,v 1.1 2012/05/21 15:24:00 aballier Exp $

EAPI=4

inherit qt4-r2 autotools subversion

DESCRIPTION="A Qt application to control the JACK Audio Connection Kit and ALSA sequencer connections."
HOMEPAGE="http://qjackctl.sourceforge.net/"
ESVN_REPO_URI="https://qjackctl.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/${PN}/trunk"

LICENSE="GPL-2"
SLOT="0"
KEYWORDS=""

IUSE="alsa dbus debug portaudio"

RDEPEND="
        >=media-sound/jack-audio-connection-kit-0.109.2
        x11-libs/qt-core:4
        x11-libs/qt-gui:4
        x11-libs/qt-xmlpatterns
        alsa? ( media-libs/alsa-lib )
        dbus? ( x11-libs/qt-dbus:4 )
        portaudio? ( media-libs/portaudio )"
DEPEND="${RDEPEND}"

S=${WORKDIR}/${PN}

DOCS="AUTHORS ChangeLog README TODO TRANSLATORS"

src_prepare() {
        qt4-r2_src_prepare
        eautoreconf
}

src_configure() {
        econf \
                $(use_enable alsa alsa-seq) \
                $(use_enable dbus) \
                $(use_enable debug) \
                $(use_enable portaudio)

        # Emulate what the Makefile does, so that we can get the correct
        # compiler used.
        eqmake4 ${PN}.pro -o ${PN}.mak
}

src_compile() {
        emake -f ${PN}.mak
        lupdate ${PN}.pro || die "lupdate failed"
}

audiodef · Post by **audiodef** » Thu Nov 08, 2012 5:52 pm

The section about /dev/raw1394 is no longer valid, as the Firewire ABI has changed in recent kernels.

Instead of

/etc/udev/rules.d/raw1394:

Code: Select all

KERNEL=="raw1394", GROUP="audio", MODE="0664"

you should have

/etc/udev/rules.d/fw.rules:

Code: Select all

KERNEL=="fw0", GROUP="audio", MODE="0664"
KERNEL=="fw1", GROUP="audio", MODE="0664"
KERNEL=="fw2", GROUP="audio", MODE="0664"

for however many /dev/fw* devices you have when all your devices are powered up.

audiodef · Post by **audiodef** » Sat Dec 15, 2012 5:23 pm

NOTE:

Did some thread cleanup. Still have a little more to do, but ebuilds will not be posted directly to this thread any more. They will be posted here and announcements about ebuild fixes will be posted here. This thread will stick with general configuration issues for Gentoo Studio, as well as general tips and tricks for audio on Gentoo.

audiodef · Post by **audiodef** » Sat Dec 15, 2012 5:26 pm

I was working on issues surrounding installing Openoctave from an ebuild when I came across this statement in the source README:

Code: Select all

For Gentoo users: When building your kernel, Gentoo recommends you build alsa directly into the kernel.
In our testing, this has proved more stable than building alsa as modules.

That might be true, but I recommend that ALSA be compiled as modules anyway. If you need to troubleshoot sound issues, you'll have to reboot if you change certain things (driver conflicts, for example). If ALSA is compiled as modules, you can unload and reload them without having to reboot. I've never personally experienced stability issues with ALSA as modules and in fact whenever I've had "issues", sometimes I've found that having modules (oddly) solved them.

Do what works for you - I'm just saying modules might be easier to work with.

audiodef · Post by **audiodef** » Sat Dec 15, 2012 5:27 pm

FYI:

It seems the hot-pluggable CPU kernel option might be a good thing for multi-core systems built to perform serious audio tasks. If anyone has detailed knowledge about why this may or may not be a good thing for Gentoo Studio, please post here.

audiodef · Post by **audiodef** » Sat Dec 15, 2012 5:27 pm

For those who set up their Gentoo machines to perform professional audio work AND want Openshot, which seems to have been removed from the pro-audio overlay, you can find the latest version in the luman overlay, as indicated here.

_______0 · Post by **_______0** » Wed Jan 02, 2013 2:52 pm

Code: Select all

 * Adding overlay,...
 * Running Subversion... # /usr/bin/svn co svn://svn.tuxfamily.org/svnroot/proaudio/proaudio/trunk/overlays/proaudio/@ /var/lib/layman/pro-audio
svn: Unknown hostname 'svn.tuxfamily.org'
 * Failure result returned from Subversion

I can't add the overlay :/

audiodef · Post by **audiodef** » Wed Jan 02, 2013 4:54 pm

_______0 wrote:

Code: Select all

 * Adding overlay,...
 * Running Subversion... # /usr/bin/svn co svn://svn.tuxfamily.org/svnroot/proaudio/proaudio/trunk/overlays/proaudio/@ /var/lib/layman/pro-audio
svn: Unknown hostname 'svn.tuxfamily.org'
 * Failure result returned from Subversion

I can't add the overlay :/

Please post the exact command you used.

Gentoo Studio: A Gentoo Linux Professional Audio Workstation

Gentoo Studio: A Gentoo Linux Professional Audio Workstation

Re: Gentoo Studio: Professional Audio Gentoo Workstation

Thx for the help

Re: Thx for the help

/dev/raw1394 rules change