alsa & OSS

[Xavier de Labouret <zezaz@chez.com>]

Hi,

I cant get alsa OSS emulation layer to work on my Woody box. My soundcard is a SB 128 (es1371 chip).
After reading the FAQ, the BTS and some google attempts, i desperately hope someone can tell me what i am missing!


1) alsa native layer: it works.
I managed alsa native layer to work by installing the kernel-image and alsa-modules packages:
aplay plays correctly audio files.

Until then everyting was fine (I had to patch alsaconf as described in #96427 to get it work though).


2) alsa oss emulation: something goes wrong...

I put startosslayer=true in my /etc/alsa/alsa-base.conf, and restarted /etc/init.d/alsa.

All the needed modules are loaded:

Module                  Size  Used by    Tainted: P 
snd-seq-midi            3232   0  (autoclean) (unused)
snd-seq-oss            23264   0  (unused)
snd-seq-midi-event      2920   0  [snd-seq-midi snd-seq-oss]
snd-seq                37196   2  [snd-seq-midi snd-seq-oss snd-seq-midi-event]
snd-pcm-oss            35744   0  (unused)
snd-mixer-oss           9184   0  [snd-pcm-oss]
snd-card-ens1371        9728   0 
snd-pcm                48576   0  [snd-pcm-oss snd-card-ens1371]
snd-timer              10432   0  [snd-seq snd-pcm]
snd-rawmidi            12576   0  [snd-seq-midi snd-card-ens1371]
snd-seq-device          3968   0  [snd-seq-midi snd-seq-oss snd-seq snd-rawmidi]
snd-ac97-codec         23232   0  [snd-card-ens1371]
snd                    25352   0  [snd-seq-midi snd-seq-oss snd-seq-midi-event snd-seq snd-pcm-oss snd-mixer-oss snd-card-ens1371 snd-pcm snd-timer snd-rawmidi snd-seq-device snd-ac97-codec]

But OSS apps do not work (ie simple tools like bplay do not get any sound output). aplay still works though.

So i begin to wonder if alsa oss layer works with these packages on my configuration. 

I have some questions now:
- Can i expect to have better results if i recompile the kernel from source?
- May VIA card has an ac97 sound chip in it . Sound module snd-ac97-codec loads itself even if i did not ask him to (no reference in /etc/modutils/alsa, nor /etc/modules.conf). Why? Can it explain some of my problems?

Configuration:
Hardware: SB 128 (es1371 chip), Athlon main processor
Packages:
ii  kernel-image-2.4.16-k7     2.4.16-1
ii  alsa-modules-2.4.16-k7     0.9+0beta10+1+2.4.16+1

Thank you,

Xavier de Labouret