Udev and ALSA
 

I'm running udev and ALSA on my Debian installation (and obviously running Unstable). Sound works fine in most programs, but I'm having trouble with Mplayer (1.0-pre5-0.8). Whether I try using ALSA or OSS drivers, I get a message complaining about the lack of /dev/mixer (which doesn't exist, the program's right about that), although the ALSA driver's message is accompanied by a loop that forces me to restart X. A quick peek into my /dev and /dev/snd doesn't reveal any likely canidates, either.

So my question is, how can I get udev to create the missing /dev/mixer, or at least get Mplayer to ignore its absence? Is my only choice to load ALSA's OSS-compatibility layer? (Ugh.) Or is some sort of symbolic link to some file I've never heard of in order? Help?

Here's what I've got...


jeff@gentoo jeff $ ls -l /dev/mixer
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 11 Nov 8 02:00 /dev/mixer -> sound/mixer
jeff@gentoo jeff $ ls -l /dev/sound/mixer
crw-rw---- 1 root audio 14, 0 Nov 8 02:00 /dev/sound/mixer

And here's what I've got:

debian:/home/ben# ls -l /dev/sound
ls: /dev/sound: No such file or directory
debian:/home/ben# ls -l /dev/sound/mixer
ls: /dev/sound/mixer: No such file or directory


Um, I'm aware of how to list the contents of a directory, if that's what you're implying...

Hei talkingwires

Did you ever sort this out?

I'm wondering the same thing, trying to get a grip on what applies when using udev.. looking in fact for an Alsa/Udev Howto

regards

EDIT: I re-configured all of the alsa/sound devices to 'built-in for the first time (have always used modules until now) and everything works fine AND I now have

# ls -l /dev/mixer
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 11 Nov 26 2004 /dev/mixer -> sound/mixer

thats with udev btw on Gentoo 2.6.10-rc2.

mvh

I've had udev and alsa working together, but I haven't tried with mplayer. I assume the mixer works through the /dev/snd/controlC* devices. Anyway I could play an mp3 using mpg321 started with option '-o alsa09' (apparently also valid for alsa v1.0.6 which I'm using). Alsamixer worked fine for setting levels.

Mpg321 depends on an alsa plugin for the libao library:

/usr/lib/ao/plugins-2/libalsa09.so

I'm not sure if there is a corresponding thing for mplayer, but mpg321 would be a good test for your system. Make sure you have all the libao stuff installed. I think there are a couple of relevant Debian packages. I wasn't using Debian for this tho'.