Subject: Re: Sound on Linux laptops
From: Ben Stanley (bds02@uow.edu.au)
Date: Wed Mar 06 2002 - 22:51:37 MST
Paul Guba wrote:
> So now that we have all moaned about or defended this OS. How about
> some solutions. It seems that some people have got sound working on
> their various imacs or powerbooks. Either by luck or hard work.
> Others have said its not so hard. So prove it to me. Write a How To
> win a T-Shirt. I'll buy you a T-shirt if you can write it so I can
> read it and get sound working, play a CD and MP3s on my pismo. I
> don't have time to search the web for solutions. I want a straight
> forward how to.
I can play mp3's in kde - but I disable the kde sound server (artsd).
to turn off artsd, go to the kde control panel
open the sound bit
find the checkbox that says to start up a sound server on kde startup
and make sure it's off.
to double check that artsd isn't running, type
ps -e | grep artsd
if you get nothing back, then it's not running. If it's still running, type
killall artsd
Now, to play mp3s, start up xmms.
Right click somewhere on the face of xmms to bring up the menu - go to
Options | Preferences.
This brings up a dialog. Select the Audio I/O Plugins tab. Look at the
Output Plugin area - there is a popup menu. Mine contains 4 options:
aRtsDriver 0.4 [libartsout.so]
Disk Writer Plugin 1.2.6 [libdisk_writer.so]
eSound Output Plugin 1.2.6 [libesdout.so]
OSS Driver 1.2.6 [libOSS.so]
It works for me when I select either eSound or OSS. I haven't tried Disk
Writer, but I assume it works since it doesn't talk to any sound driver.
The aRts driver won't work because the artsd that comes with YDL 2.1
won't work.
Take your pick and Click OK. If you pick eSound, then GNOME programs
will be able to output sound as well, but I use OSS.
You should now be able to play mp3s. If you can't, there are 2
possibilities:
* You don't have the kernel sound module installed
* some other application has opened /dev/dsp already (only one program
may open it at a time).
You can find out if the kernel module is loaded by typing (as root)
lsmod
You should have a dmasound_awacs module. If it's not there, look for it
in your /lib/modules/2.4.XX/kernel/drivers/sound
directory. (replace XX with your kernel version.) The Yellow Dog kernels
come with it pre-compiled already. If you need to compile a kernel to
get a sound module, make sure you turn on *I forgot the option*.
If the module is loaded and you can't get xmms to play sound, then
probably it will tell you something is wrong with /dev/dsp. Check that
you have access permissions to /dev/dsp (most likely this is correct).
If it's wrong, fix it by changing it to be owned by you: (as root)
chown <your-login-name-here>.users /dev/dsp
and make sure you have rw permissions as well, using (again as root)
chmod u+rw /dev/dsp
The only other problem is that some other program could have already
opened /dev/dsp (eg mol). You can find out exactly which program using
lsof /dev/dsp
(most likely you will have to install lsof first - it's not usually
installed. Look for an rpm called lsof on your YellowDog CD; first mount
the CD (as root)
mount /mnt/cdrom
then go to the directory
cd /mnt/cdrom/YellowDog/ppc
then install it with (tab filename completion might be helpful here)
rpm --install lsof-<version>.ppc.rpm
Then
cd
(to get out of the CDROM directory and return to root's home directory)
and then
eject cdrom
)
* Note that some of these commands live in /usr/sbin or /sbin
directories. If you became root using the su command, your path won't
include these directories. You can still execute programs residing in
these directories by prefixing the program name with the appropriate
directory, eg
/sbin/lsmod
When I can't remember where a program lives, I try both and one or the
other will work.
Alternatively, just log in as root on the text console (use
CTRL-OPTION-FN-F1 to get a text console, CTRL-OPTION-FN-F7 to get back
to XWindows, other Function keys work too - experiment - but beware of
instability in virtual consoles with YDL's 2.4.10-12a kernel. Make sure
to log out when you're done.)
Now, to actually use artsd under YDL 2.1 on a pismo, I haven't done that
myself yet, but there was mention on the list of some rpms which
supposedly worked.
I haven't tried playing CDs with this setup, but I suspect from other
postings that it won't work because of a missing connection between the
CD player and the sound chip (so how does MacOS play CDs on this model
then? by ripping them digitally to the sound chip? That seems
ridiculous... Surely there is a connection...)
If anyone wants to take this and incorporate it into a proper howto, you
have my blessing. But better still would be for YDL to get everything
working properly so that this kind of thing wasn't necessary. And Thanks
YDL for making the distro as accessible as already is. I'm looking
forward to 2.2.
Ben.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2a24 : Wed Mar 06 2002 - 23:03:55 MST