Re: Some ALSA apps stopped working [REALLY SOLVED]
Florian Kulzer wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 06, 2007 at 19:49:55 +0100, Chris Lale wrote:
>
> [...]
>
>> I've now discovered why /dev/dsp disappeared - /dev/dsp is deleted when I run
>> alsaconf! This might be related to unreproducible bug #406738: alsa-utils:
>> Running alsaconf stops sound card from working[1]. Not quite the same because my
>> sound card(s) work but the OSS apps (eg XMMS) do not.
>>
>> Should I report this as a new bug?
>
> I am not even sure if this is really a bug. It seems that alsaconf loads
> the correct alsa driver in your case. This is all it is supposed to do,
> if I understand the script correctly. (The relevant line is "modprobe
> $CARD_DRIVER".) I do not know if this is supposed to trigger the loading
> of snd_pcm_oss. (Some people might not want to have the OSS legacy
> support modules loaded by default.)
>
Problem solved. alsaconf runs the obsolete command "update-modules" which
modifies /etc/modprobe.d/sound and /etc/modprobe.conf if present. According to
the update-modules man page the existence of /etc/modprobe.conf will cause
/etc/modprobe.d/ to be ignored by Debian packages which store their
configuration files there.
alsaconf unloads all the sound modules, configures the sound card and then loads
them again. I think that it was ignoring a configuration file which told it to
load snd-pcm-oss. The configuration file is probably /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base
which contains this line:
install snd-pcm /sbin/modprobe --ignore-install snd-pcm && { /sbin/modprobe
--quiet snd-pcm-oss ; : ; }
I moved /etc/modprobe.conf out of the way and everything now works properly.
I am not sure why /etc/modprobe.conf existed. Probably because my Etch (Stable)
system has been incrementally upgraded from Woody (Stable) and Etch (Testing).
Worth reporting as a bug, do you think?
--
Chris.
Reply to: