Hi all,

I've been having troubles with sound in Enemy Territory for a while, and
despite having tried everything I could find on the subject on the net, I
haven't been able to solve them. Now, I'm still no sound expert, but I did
come to the sneaky suspicion that alsa-oss simply does not work on my system.
Instead of focussing on the game, I tried running oss-based sound apps such
as mpg123, hydrogen and krecord, and what do you know: no sound! Alsa-using
apps such as madplay, ogg123, xine and amarok play sound without any problem.
So I would like to know if anyone here has an idea what could cause this
malfunction of oss emulation, and obviously if they have any suggestions on
how to solve this problem.
I run gentoo, with a 2.6.7-r8 kernel (more recent versions clash with my
video driver), and kde 3.4.0, without arts. In the kernel, I've got Sound
Card Support enabled as a module, but not alsa or oss. I've emerged the
latest alsa packages (1.9), including driver (snd-intel8x0), libs, headers,
tools, utils, and obviously alsa-oss. I have tried running with the kernel
modules, but no change there.

This shows what sound modules are loaded:

$ lsmod | grep snd
snd_seq_oss 41216 0
snd_seq_midi_event 11136 1 snd_seq_oss
snd_seq 59536 5 snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_midi_event
snd_seq_device 13068 2 snd_seq_oss,snd_seq
snd_intel8x0 37596 1
snd_ac97_codec 86780 1 snd_intel8x0
snd_pcm_oss 56232 0
snd_pcm 96004 3 snd_intel8x0,snd_ac97_codec,snd_pcm_oss
snd_timer 29828 2 snd_seq,snd_pcm
snd_page_alloc 14088 2 snd_intel8x0,snd_pcm
snd_mixer_oss 24064 1 snd_pcm_oss
snd 60900 13
snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_midi_event,snd_seq,snd_seq_device,snd_intel8x0,snd_ac97_codec,snd_pcm_oss,snd_pc m,snd_timer,snd_mixer_oss
soundcore 14048 3 snd,audio


and alsasound is started at default runlevel. The relevant bit of
my /etc/modules.d/alsa is:

alias /dev/mixer snd-mixer-oss
alias /dev/dsp snd-pcm-oss
alias /dev/midi snd-seq-oss

# Set this to the correct number of cards.

# --- BEGIN: Generated by ALSACONF, do not edit. ---
# --- ALSACONF version 1.0.9a ---
options snd device_mode=0666
alias snd-card-0 snd-intel8x0
alias sound-slot-0 snd-intel8x0
# --- END: Generated by ALSACONF, do not edit. ---


Running mpg123 doesn't return any error messages, just no sound. This is what
appears on the command line:

$ mpg123 -v incoming/bass/JohnYtseJam.mp3
High Performance MPEG 1.0/2.0/2.5 Audio Player for Layer 1, 2 and 3.
Version 0.59s-r9 (2000/Oct/27). Written and copyrights by Michael Hipp.
Uses code from various people. See 'README' for more!
THIS SOFTWARE COMES WITH ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY! USE AT YOUR OWN RISK!

Directory: incoming/bass/
Playing MPEG stream from JohnYtseJam.mp3 ...
MPEG 1.0, Layer: III, Freq: 44100, mode: Joint-Stereo, modext: 2, BPF : 417
Channels: 2, copyright: No, original: Yes, CRC: No, emphasis: 0.
Bitrate: 128 Kbits/s, Extension value: 0
Audio: 1:1 conversion, rate: 44100, encoding: signed 16 bit, channels: 2
Frame# 524 [ 0], Time: 00:13.68 [00:00.00], Bitrate 128
[0:13] Decoding of JohnYtseJam.mp3 finished.


Enemy Territory returns the following relevant error message:

------- sound initialization -------
/dev/dsp: No such device
Could not toggle.
------------------------------------
Sound memory manager started
Sys_LoadDll(/home/ab/.etwolf/etmain/ui.mp.i386.so)...
Sys_LoadDll(/home/ab/.etwolf/etmain/ui.mp.i386.so) failed:
"/home/ab/.etwolf/etmain/ui.mp.i386.so: cannot open shared object file: No
such file or directory"
Sys_LoadDll(/usr/local/games/enemy-territory2.56/etmain/ui.mp.i386.so)... ok
Sys_LoadDll(ui) found **vmMain** at 0x52225bfc
Sys_LoadDll(ui) succeeded!

My user is part of the audio group, and /dev/dsp exists. Some relevant
directory listings (never mind the dates :-):

$ ls -l /dev/*dsp
lr-xr-xr-x 1 root root 10 Jun 10 14:54 /dev/adsp -> sound/adsp
lr-xr-xr-x 1 root root 9 Jun 10 14:54 /dev/dsp -> sound/dsp
$ ls -l /dev/sound/*
crw------- 1 ab audio 14, 12 Jan 1 1970 /dev/sound/adsp
crw------- 1 ab audio 14, 3 Jan 1 1970 /dev/sound/dsp
crw------- 1 ab audio 14, 0 Jan 1 1970 /dev/sound/mixer
crw------- 1 ab audio 14, 1 Jan 1 1970 /dev/sound/sequencer
crw------- 1 ab audio 14, 8 Jan 1 1970 /dev/sound/sequencer2


I tried running Enemy Territory with et + seta snddevice="/dev/adsp", which
just changes the error message to:

------- sound initialization -------
/dev/adsp: No such device
Could not open /dev/adsp
------------------------------------
Sound memory manager started


So, I hope this will provides someone with enough information to find out
what's causing this malfunction. Workarounds are welcome, but I would
appreciate it if someone could provide me with some explanation on what
exactly is going wrong here. I'm striving to understand my system, you see,
part of the fun of linux :-):-)

So do you start programs with the aoss wrapper on? Like this:
"aoss program"

Hi all,

I've asked the same question on the alsa-user mailing list, and finally got a satisfactory
answer. The root of the problem seems to be located here:

The audio.ko module, which is a USB audio module, had taken over the /dev/dsp device, and since
I don't have any USB audio device, alsa-oss didn't work. I must have compiled the module because
I was considering buying such a device at one time, and figured having a driver could come in handy.
Removing the module repaired alsa-oss, and even ET runs fine now.
Anyway, thanks to everyone who replied, and maybe (doubtfully) this post will help others suffering
a similar problem.