alsa and hotplug problems with linux 2.6
 

Hi everyone, I'm having some problems with linux 2.6, I'm using slackware 9.1 and here it goes:

Before installing linux 2.6.1, I removed all the alsa packages that come with slackware, all of them, and them built my kernel with everything I could loaded as modules in the kernel... booted up and then, loaded the modules of alsa and got a hugee error list from dmesg, ok... I'm not even going to tell my other problems with alsa, since I never even got it compiled (only the lib, the driver gives me a PDE error), also, I would like to know why I should use alsa instead of OSS, since for me OSS is just perfect and always worked, do you think that futurely OSS will be totally dismissed from linux? I mean, do you think linux programmers will give up from OSS and use alsa only?

Also... hotplug is necessary for some hardware detection... on linux 2.4.22 (comes with slackware) it reads /etc/modules.conf and loads up my configuration from there, don't know why, but it simply stopped working.

Also, every boot gives me an advice from mousedev module, I searched a lot on the configuration and found nothing about it, after trying to put everything mouse related as modules it didn't work too.

And Also (uff...), my keyboard is problematic, I use br-abnt2 (I'm from Brazil) and on linux 2.4.22, it worked perfectly, on 2.6.1, works very bad, I tried to manually loadkeys and the same thing... X11 works normally...

Also, NVIDIA drivers don't work with linux 2.6 yet (I know there's a patch for it), but anyway, I really think the kernel team should not make changes so quickly, because it causes things like this, and I think that deprecate OSS is a bad idea, OSS still is under development and always worked for everyone.

To fix the hotplug system, should I removepkg hotplug and build it on my own? And the compile problem with alsa? It has a new driver that I need (OSS already have it...) but since I think that alsa will ruin OSS on linux I need to have it (and I need the new driver).

I didn't try it yet, but anyone got any experience with the ide-cd cd recording module? How do cdrecord and cdrdao work with it? I didn't found any version of them to do this, so, is it only by CVS? Or neither this.. ?

What bothers me most here is my sound, and after it the fact of /etc/modules.conf not be loaded (I know I can use /etc/rc.d/rc.modules, but I just want to keep modules.conf), and the mousedev loading problem during boot (althoug it has no effects later, it really piss me off) and the console keyboard problem, if anyone has any hints on compilling alsa, I would be very thankful.

I await for opinions, critics and tips, and sorry for the bad english...

Marcelo Zabani

Hi, Zaba -- I wish knew the answer but I don't. I'm also having trouble with sound and Slackware 9.1. I'm sure its my problem and not ALSA, but its taking me a long time to figure out what's going on.

Following some suggestions from this forum, I'm going to try and troubleshoot using info from the /proc system.

Anyway . . . it sounds like you know more about how to fix Linux than I do. I know you'll get some answers from some of the more experienced Linux users here.

Ciao!

:D I'm very glad to know there are other people with the same problem, anyway... not talking about them, I would like to know what you guys think about deprecating OSS on linux, if it really will be deprecated (I mean about software with sound), and if anyone has a history to tell about how alsa helped and oss didn't work, or something like that. I really like OSS, and OSS drivers works as fine as ALSA drivers, they are more simple and sometimes, alsa gives me problems, also, ALSA needs several tools to be simply used, while OSS needs only to load the module, and if you want controls you can get a mixer like aumix, since ALSA is providing binary compatibility of OSS, I really think they want to deprecate it, and I'm not happy with that at all... anyway, I wait for opinions...

Kernel 2.6 doesn't use modules.conf anymore... Don't ask me why, but now you have to make a modprobe.conf file in your /etc folder... the easiest way to do this is to go to your module-init-tools directory and run the generate_modprobe.conf script like this:

./generate-modprobe.conf /etc/modprobe.conf

Then it'll create your modprobe.conf based on your modules.conf (I think...feel free to correct me on this).

Anyway, for the modules there are some things that'll probably need changing, since the new kernels change the names of some modules (I think it's ridiculous)... for example, usb-ohci is now ohci-hcd, mousedev and keybdev are now usbmouse and usbkbd, etc...

So for hotplug to work I think you have to substitute every instance of ksyms to kallsyms in your /etc/rc.sysinit file (can also be /etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit)...

Don't think of this as the ultimate truth, I am only a newbie, but I had success compiling kernel 2.6.5 by doing some of the things I just told you...... just sharing the knowledge so that you don't have to kill yourself the way I did.


For the NVIDIA drivers, heh, I had a blast with these... go to nvidia.com as they have a new driver version (5336) that works with kernel 2.6... A lot of people have been complaining about this driver, saying that it is unstable, etc, etc...

I had it installed briefly (now I'm using the patched 4496), and I had problems with glx and opengl... So I'd recommend to download driver 4496, patch it with the www.minion.de patch, and install it. It works like a charm. You might have to rename your /usr/lib/tls/libGL symbolic links in order to get OpenGL to work...

Anyway I hope I have helped you at least a little... Have fun.