Re: why use ALSA?

[Bill Moseley <moseley@hank.org>]

At 12:13 PM 08/17/02 +0200, Jord Swart wrote:
>
>> Ok.  Sounds tempting.  Is there a way to know what I will gain based on
>> my hardware?
>http://www.alsa-project.org/ should be the way to find out. 

I should let them know that the link to my Yamaha YMF-754 spec sheet just
shows me an ad how to hide my porno viewing on Windows...


>> Sorry to be so clueless, but I was looking at the Debian alsa packages
>> (wondering how to install alsa).  I see, for example, alsa-utils which
>> depends on alsa-modules.  Here's something else that's not clear to me in
>> with the debian package system: I've built my own kernel:

>You want the alsa utils, base and since you've build your own kernel, you
need 
>the alsa source (most probably).

Does that mean since I built my own kernel I can't use *-modules packages
(e.g. alsa-modules in this example) since my /lib/modules/* directory is
specific to the "append_to_version" that I used?

Or will the package install scripts use output from uname to find the
location of the modules directory?

>Now I hope you've built your kernel with make-kpkg, since that is one of the 
>cool features Debian offers your. If you've downloaded the xfs patch with a 
>debian packages it was installed in /usr/src/patches (somewhere). If you
then 
>specify 'patch_the_kernel := YES' in /etc/kernel-pkg.conf and execute the 
>magic:
>make-kpkg --append_to_version -xfs-laptop --added_patches xfs --initrd 
>kernel_image

Yes, I used make-kpkg, although I used a slightly different method -- as
recommended by the xfs package maintainer.  Basically the same, though.  I
don't use initrd since my xfs is built into the kernel.

    # apt-get install kernel-source-2.4.18
    # apt-get install kernel-patch-xfs
    $ cd /usr/src
    $ tar jxvf kernel-source-2.4.18.tar.bz2
    $ ln -s kernel-source-2.4.18 linux
    $ cd linux
    $ make-kpkg clean

  Apply the patches manually    
    $ /usr/src/kernel-patches/all/apply/xfs
    $ make xconfig  (disable pcmcia)

  Set the extraversion for this kernel manually
  --append_to_version is the same thing, AFAIK

    $ nano Makefile
    EXTRAVERSION = -xfs-laptop
    $ fakeroot make-kpkg --revision=custom.1.0 kernel_image

  PCMCIA:
    # apt-get install pcmcia-source
    $ cd /usr/src
    $ tar zxof pcmcia-cs.tar.gz
    $ cd linux
    $ fakeroot make-kpkg --revision=custom.1.0 modules_image

I know I could build kernel_image and modules_image at the same time.
make-kpkg is cool.

Is it true that if I had unpacked alsa-source make-kpkg would also produce
an alsa-modules-*.deb package along with the deb for pcmcia modules?

>The hard part is configuring your /etc/alsa/modutils/0.9 file. I'm pretty
sure 
>that google will bring you an answer if you search for your card in 
>combination with alsa.

Yes.  I remember trying to setup alsa on another machine and pulling my
hair out over setting up the modules.  I was finding it hard to get info to
help me grok all of the modules setup.  Sure is easier to run modconf and
simply select the module(s) needed.

Thanks for you comments!


-- 
Bill Moseley
mailto:moseley@hank.org