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Re: The new broken world of 2.6, ALSA, and hotplug.



* Matt Zimmerman translated into ASCII [Wed, Mar 31, 2004 at 11:09:48AM -0800][<[🔎] 20040331190948.GI7200@alcor.net>]
[..]
> I don't see why hotplug should explicitly load the OSS drivers.  If they are
> desired, they should either be loaded by ALSA's init script, or (probably
> better) set up to load automatically by an /etc/modutils file.
> 

I am not impling hotplug should load the OSS drivers. I agree with the
latter solution of setting up a proper modutils dependency - something
alsa-base should be doing.

However, I do have a problem with hotplug doing PCI enumeration. Certainly,
I think it is something Linux has been missing. But, indiscriminately
loading the drivers for all hardware on a computer is the wrong behavior, as
has been demonstrated by multiple people.

I'm not totally convinced the option enabling/disabling PCI enumeration is
the solution either.

Where is a Device Manager when you need it? ;-)

[..]
> These mixer settings are notoriously fragile.  They break with a new release
> of ALSA.  They break *horribly* when you upgrade from 2.4 to 2.6.
> 

I have not found them fragile.

Furthermore, if they are so, then why is this being done?

> > #3) ALSA's init script then detects that the drivers are already loaded, and
> > assumes this is because ALSA was compiled statically in to the kernel.
> 
> As far as I know, this doesn't cause any harm.  The message is misleading,
> but the conclusion that it draws from this is OK.
> 

No, the conclusion it draws is wrong. The entire ALSA subsystem has _not_
been loaded. It thus skips the rest of its initialization because of this
incorrect assumption.

> > Is summary:
> > 
> > All ALSA settings are potentially broken or ignored because of hotplug on
> > 2.6 kernels.
> >
> > Sounds like a hotplug problem, right? Well, not according to the package's
> > maintainer. udev is the solution!
> 
> udev *is* the solution to this particular problem, and personally, it
> doesn't bother me much if all of these fragile workarounds break in order to
> make way for the correct solution.
> 

udev is not the solution at this time. The package isn't not at a complete
state (README.Debian), the upstream software is still severely alpha
(0.023), and there are race conditions involving driver loading...

.. and let's not forget that udev currently causes another layer of
brokeness with ALSA (#240594) and LVM. (#236346 ?)

The fact is udev is not an upgrade path yet for 2.6 users. If it was, and it
is required, where are the Depends?

Scott.

-- 
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