[linux-audio-user] Re: [PlanetCCRMA] A few questions, some suggestions

From: Fernando Lopez-Lezcano <nando@email-addr-hidden>
Date: Tue Jul 26 2005 - 18:57:18 EEST

On Tue, 2005-07-26 at 02:55, BJaY wrote:
> 7) CCRMA low latency kernal : When it says experimental kernal 'may not work
> with your hardware' does this mean 'sound card' or are there many other
> issues ?

The more "experimental" kernels in Planet CCRMA use Ingo Molnar's
realtime preempt patches. They are, or rather were, a bit experimental
with the side effect that they may not work correctly with particular
hardware or peripherials (ie: for example they could lock your machine,
or panic the kernel). But that was a while back and I think that with
the latest versions that risk is very small.

> 8) Issues with anacron and initial experience for music users shifting from
> Windows to linux : I've not seen alot of discussion about disabling various
> services (particualryly anacron) in install guides (CCRMA), any chance of
> adding this with a list of services to disable on the CCRMA install pages ?

If a system is running a kernel with realtime preempt and jack or the
appropriate audio app is well written and is using the realtime
scheduler for its audio thread then other services running in the
computer should not affect the audio (within reason, of course).
Obviously the less resources used the better but in normal usage
standard services should not be of much concern. YMMV...

> 9) Would it be a good idea to mention early on on the ccrma site that
> problems with sound cards should be directed at the alsa development team ?
> I posted some stuff to the linux-audio-dev mailing list about the trident
> sound driver (before I got my barings) and it took months to make its way to
> the alsa team.

That is a good suggestion. Hard to say where exactly to put it in the
pages, I suspect most people don't read them :-)

> 10) Any chance of the most up-to-date version of alsa in the core repository
> (The one that fixes my problem (sis sound chip)) ? As I understand it, if
> you want to recompile alsa, you have to recompile ther kernal (somthing I
> have not yet had the guts to do) and I understand it can take all night.

I could try packaging current cvs, I've done that before. But right now
I don't have the time to do it (many other things to do). The ALSA
version in the "planetedge" test repository is the latest stable.

BTW, Planet CCRMA has a separate set of ALSA driver kernel modules that
load before the ones in the kernel (the kernel-module-alsa-* packages),
so that it is possible to upgrade ALSA without recompiling a new kernel.

> 11) Any chance you could add the business of alsa not starting properly on
> FC3 to CCRMA install documentation. Alot of pelple aquire their FC
> distributions from the back of a book or download it and then take a long
> time to become aware of the updates (that seem to fix the problem). This one
> took me ages.

I don't know which problem in FC3 you refer to......

-- Fernando
Received on Tue Jul 26 20:15:21 2005

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