Re: /dev/dsp missing (SOLVED)

[Marty <martyb@ix.netcom.com>]

hendrik@topoi.pooq.com wrote:
> On Sat, Dec 30, 2006 at 03:53:14PM +0100, Benjam? Villoslada wrote:
> > I've seen this message durning one reboot (in order to test oss modules 
> > load): "/etc/modprobe.conf exists but does not include /etc/modprobe.d/!"
> >
> > I see that my /etc/modprobe.conf is empty (no idea about the reason)  I've 
> > added include /etc/modprobe.d and now the system loads oss modules on boot:
> >
> > $ cat /etc/modprobe.conf
> > include /etc/modprobe.d
>
> I did this on my sarge system (which also didn't have a /dev/dsp) and 
> one appeared.  I could cat from it, and cat /dev/urandom to it and get 
> noise.  There are probably better things to cat to it.
>
> Unfortunately, after I did this, none of my audio programs worked.  
> Couldn't get sound out of kaffeine, xmms, konqueror....

I know that xmms at least requires you to specify either ALSA or OSS in the 
sound driver configuration menu.

> Is this a matter of /dev/dsp disabling alsa or something?
>
> When I took the line out of /etc/modprobe.conf, making it empty again, 
> and rebooted (just in case), /dev/dsp vanished, and sould still didn't 
> come back.  I had a mute system.  It took powering it down to restore 
> normal sound, without /dev/dsp.  This is probably a bug somewhere, that 
> the sound card isn't being initialised properly.
>
> Can anyone tell me how to get audio input without disbling the rest of 
> the sound system?  That's what I thought I needed /dev/dsp for.

In Sarge some audio programs, like audacity use only OSS.  Otherwise you can use 
the ALSA sound devices.  With ALSA I suppose you have to disable real OSS, which 
has been deprecated anyway, and use the ALSA OSS-compatibility driver instead. 
I do this myself but use a combination of OSS programs that seems to require 
that I turn off the Gnome sound server (using the sound options in desktop 
preferences) but that could be a configuration error on my part.  This setup 
obviously does not support audio mixing.

 I need
> to rip cassette tapes of church services to post on the church web site.

I've digitized a number of audio cassettes that using Gnome sound recorder, but 
getting the volume right was always tricky.

> -- hendrik