Report on the Debianized VM

Ross Boylan RossBoylan at stanfordalumni.org
Wed Mar 31 00:17:01 UTC 2004


On Tue, Mar 30, 2004 at 06:46:20AM -0800, Ned Konz wrote:
> On Tuesday 30 March 2004 12:19 am, Ross Boylan wrote:
[stuff about how to specify options was here]
FYI, I would have guessed the syntax for multiple specs was
-vm sound=OSS display=X11
or perhaps using a comma in between.  Apparently -vm is necessary
before each option.

[stuff about there not being any sound was here]
> 
> But I assume that you've got your system working so that both the KDE apps and 
> the OSS apps (like sox/play/rec) work.
I use sound so little that I can't verify that.  Well, I have got
sound from some websites via realplayer, I think...

KDE itself routinely makes window opening and closing noises.

> 
> > However, 
> > there seem to be some problems with the latest ALSA OSS emulation; for
> > example, KDE will give an error if one sets it to use OSS, and I have
> > told it to use ALSA.
> 
> Have you made sure that the OSS emulation modules are loaded?
> 
> $ lsmod |  grep snd
> snd_intel8x0           37508  1
> snd_ac97_codec         65924  1 snd_intel8x0
> snd_mpu401_uart        11008  1 snd_intel8x0
> snd_rawmidi            30368  1 snd_mpu401_uart
> snd_seq_device          8456  1 snd_rawmidi
> snd_pcm_oss            53924  0
> snd_pcm               113700  2 snd_intel8x0,snd_pcm_oss
> snd_page_alloc         12164  2 snd_intel8x0,snd_pcm
> snd_timer              35588  1 snd_pcm
> snd_mixer_oss          19584  1 snd_pcm_oss
> snd                    58468  11 
> snd_intel8x0,snd_ac97_codec,snd_mpu401_uart,snd_rawmidi,snd_seq_device,snd_pcm_oss,snd_pcm,snd_timer,snd_mixer_oss
> soundcore              12000  1 snd

I think that part's OK.  Here's what I get (Creative Soundblaster AWE
card):

snd-seq-midi            4000   0  (autoclean) (unused)
snd-emu8000-synth      10644   0  (autoclean) (unused)
snd-emux-synth         29116   0  (autoclean) [snd-emu8000-synth]
snd-seq-virmidi         3256   0  (autoclean) [snd-emux-synth]
snd-util-mem            1280   0  (autoclean) [snd-emu8000-synth snd-emux-synth]
snd-opl3-synth         10152   0  (autoclean) (unused)
snd-seq-instr           5232   0  (autoclean) [snd-opl3-synth]
snd-seq-midi-emul       4944   0  (autoclean) [snd-emux-synth snd-opl3-synth]
snd-ainstr-fm           1924   0  (autoclean) [snd-opl3-synth]
snd-seq-oss            28928   0  (unused)
snd-seq-midi-event      3328   0  [snd-seq-midi snd-seq-virmidi snd-seq-oss]
snd-seq                36400   2  [snd-seq-midi snd-emux-synth snd-seq-virmidi snd-opl3-synth snd-seq-instr snd-seq-midi-emul snd-seq-oss snd-seq-midi-event]
snd-pcm-oss            37924   0
snd-mixer-oss          13456   1  [snd-pcm-oss]
snd-sbawe              21632   2  [snd-emu8000-synth]
snd-pnp                 3200   0  [snd-sbawe]
snd-sb16-dsp            6416   0  [snd-sbawe]
snd-pcm                60388   1  [snd-emu8000-synth snd-pcm-oss snd-sb16-dsp]
snd-page-alloc          6548   0  [snd-pcm]
snd-sb16-csp           15788   0  [snd-sbawe]
snd-sb-common           7428   0  [snd-sbawe snd-sb16-dsp snd-sb16-csp]
snd-opl3-lib            6820   0  [snd-opl3-synth snd-sbawe]
snd-hwdep               5248   0  [snd-emux-synth snd-sb16-csp snd-opl3-lib]
snd-timer              14532   0  [snd-seq snd-pcm snd-opl3-lib]
snd-mpu401-uart         3440   0  [snd-sbawe]
snd-rawmidi            13632   0  [snd-seq-midi snd-seq-virmidi snd-mpu401-uart]
snd-seq-device          4256   0  [snd-seq-midi snd-emu8000-synth snd-emux-synth snd-opl3-synth snd-seq-oss snd-seq snd-sbawe snd-opl3-lib snd-rawmidi]
snd                    33508   0  [snd-seq-midi snd-emu8000-synth snd-emux-synth snd-seq-virmidi snd-util-mem snd-opl3-synth snd-seq-instr snd-seq-oss snd-seq-midi-event snd-seq snd-pcm-oss snd-mixer-oss snd-sbawe snd-sb16-dsp snd-pcm snd-sb16-csp snd-sb-common snd-opl3-lib snd-hwdep snd-timer snd-mpu401-uart snd-rawmidi snd-seq-device]
soundcore               3972  11  [snd]

> 
> > Sound's not that key for me, but I thought I'd let you know.  And it
> > would be nice if it worked.
> 
> I think ideally someone would write a Squeak ALSA sound plugin.

For KDE, would there be a point in a plugin using aRTS?

I'm not clear if either ALSA or OSS are capable of being shared by
several apps at once (e.g., KDE and squeak).  This business of each
application needing to give up control (see below) is seriously
kludgey.

> 
> > P.S. My system is mostly testing, with a bit from unstable, so I
> > suppose that's another suspect.  However, I got the ALSA kernel
> > patches from unstable.
> 
> I'm running a Debian unstable/testing system:
> 
> kde 3.1.2 
> alsa 1.0.3-1
> arts 1.2.1-1

Here it's
kdebase                     3.1.5-2
alsa-base      1.0.3-1        ALSA sound driver common files
alsa-modules-2 1.0.2c-2+rb.2  Advanced Linux Sound Architecture (drivers)
alsa-oss       1.0.3a-1       Advanced Linux Sound Architecture (OSS compa
arts                        1.1.5-2

Other KDE packages mostly at 3.1.5-1 or 3.1.5-2, with kde-core at
3.1.2.

> 
> I tell artsd to use ALSA, and to release the sound hardware after 10
> seconds. 
> In the KDE control panel, this would be "Auto-suspend if idle after 10 
> seconds".

Hmm, I have autosuspend if idle for 60 seconds (the default I guess; I
never touched it).  But since I have it set to make noises when
windows appear, it's guaranteed not to be idle just after squeak
starts.

I reset to 10 seconds, switched to squeak, and then tried squeak sound
after waiting.  It works!  Well, sort of.  Even after I stopped the
playback, my CPU was saturated in system (rather than user) activity.
I should say that's suspiciously like the ALSA OSS emulation bug
under KDE.  On that, see my bug
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=232466 or the
probably identical
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=238716.  In other
words, it may not be a squeak problem.

Even when I enabled the squeak "soundStopWhenDone" option I could not
get the CPU useage to stop, and KDE was unable to reclaim the sound
system.

However, when I saved the image (no exit), the CPU use stopped, and
KDE was able to reclaim the sound.

> 
> I run Squeak using the aoss wrapper:
> 
> $ cat ~/bin/squeak
> #!/bin/sh
> aoss /usr/local/bin/squeak -vm display=X11 -vm sound=OSS -nomixer -xshm 
> -display :0 -swapbtn "$@" &
> 
> For me, sound output works either with or without the aoss wrapper, though.
> 
With aoss, when I try to play sound in squeak the image hangs
completely; even alt-. is no help.

Also, -xshm is not a recognized option for me, though it's documented
on the man page.  Perhaps a packaging issue?

I'm running 2.4.24 Linux kernel with devfs, AMD Athlon chip.



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