[PlanetCCRMA] [GL] Planet CCRMA and (new) Gadget Labs driver questions...

Fernando Lopez-Lezcano nando at ccrma.Stanford.EDU
Tue May 6 02:11:01 PDT 2008


On Mon, 2008-05-05 at 19:48 -0600, David Marion wrote:
> Fernando Lopez-Lezcano wrote:
> > On Mon, 2008-05-05 at 08:33 -0400, Mike Mazarick wrote:
> >> Greetings, list!!!
> >>
> >> I’m testing out a new (unreleased to alsa) driver, and am unsure of
> >> whether I’m running into driver issues, FC8 issues, or something else
> >> (most likely, “the ‘nut’ behind the wheel”).
> >>
> >>  
> >> Here are the issues:
> >>
> >> 1.        When the driver is loaded into a FC8 CCRMA setup (by
> >> directly inserting the module with the command ‘insmod ./gl824.ko’),
> > 
> > You probably should use modprobe, that will take care of dependencies if
> > any (more general purpose than insmod). 
> 
> I'm having issues with it recognizing my CD-ROM drive and applying 
> updates. (I'm not happy with FC8 right now.)

Sorry to hear that. 

What is the problem with updates? They usually work just fine... is this
a problem with specific servers? Specific packages? What error message
or messages are you getting?

> The module should not have any external dependencies.
> (However, see note below about pulseaudio.)
> 
> 
> >> Notice the group is ‘audio’.  
> > 
> > The /dev/snd/* files in a Fedora system should be owned by whoever is
> > logged into the console (into the graphical login). This is so that only
> > the logged in user can use the audio devices. No audio group by
> > default. 
> > 
> > Are you looking at this from a text console without logging into a
> > graphical session?
> > 
> > The permissions are controlled through /etc/security/console.perms*
> > 
> >> Now, we can work around this small issue by putting the user account
> >> in the ‘audio’ group. 
> > 
> > Hmm, not in Fedora right? There is no audio group, I think. Or at least
> > it is not necessary to have one. 
> > 
> >> However, I don’t think that is normally done, so I’d be interested in
> >> hearing what the normal group id is for the devices in /dev/snd for a
> >> PlanetCCRMA/FC8 distribution. 
> > 
> > Files should be owned by the logged in user, that is done automagically
> > by the system at login time. 

(that was not correct, see below, or look at the bugzilla thread)

> Fedora 7 and 8 are known to have broken sound:
>    http://home.nyc.rr.com/computertaijutsu/rhsound.html

Interesting choice of words. I would rather say that "some users have
been having problems with sound in fedora". Or even "many users have
been having problems with sound", if you want. 

I have been using f7 and f8 and sound is not broken :-)

Sound is working for _most_ users, I guess. I don't think I have seen 
reports of this in the Planet CCRMA list but I may be forgetting them 
(there were problems with Pulse Audio). It does seem to work for me. 
Or maybe I am the only remaining user of Planet CCRMA[*] :-)

BTW, the issue is more complex than I remembered, as ConsoleKit and hal
are now involved (it used to be just /etc/security/console.perms* that
determined ownership of devices for console users). I just have not kept
up with the tech details underneath the hood as it has been working with
no extra tuning. 

> Fedora 9 is supposed to fix the sound, but the release is 13 May.
>    http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/9/Schedule
> 
> I'm not sure having somebody new to Linux edit a .perms file is a good 
> way to start them off. (Maybe use an install script to do it.)

Nope, it is not a good start of course. On the other hand there are many
more users for whom sound just works. 

You make it look like everybody needs to do that and that is just not
the case. 

> Here is the bug report...
>    https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=292201
> 
> This is how to modify the .perms file:
>    https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=292201#c6
> 
> Most people like Ubuntu because it works with almost any hardware.
>    http://tech.slashdot.org/tech/08/05/05/1440214.shtml
> 
> 
> >> It’s probably not a big deal one way or the other, but we would prefer
> >> to do something consistent with what normally occurs as far as
> >> permissions in multiple distributions.   I’m pushing for Planet CCRMA
> >> testing, but several of the folks seem to prefer Ubunto over Fedora
> >> (and it would be good if it worked in both).
> >>
> >> Please let me know the normal user permissions and ownership structure
> >> of the /dev/snd devices.   If they are all ‘user-root, group-root, no
> >> world read/write permission’ how are they accessed?
> 
> I'm guessing, all /dev/snd devices in FC8 are root,root because 
> everything goes through pulseaudio:
>    http://www.pulseaudio.org/
>    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PulseAudio

Nope, the permissions are root because something else takes care of
allowing access to devices now. This is what I see now in my machine
(f8):

$ ls -l /dev/snd/*
crw-rw----+ 1 root root 116, 7 2008-05-06 09:30 /dev/snd/controlC0
crw-rw----+ 1 root root 116, 6 2008-05-06 09:30 /dev/snd/hwC0D0
crw-rw----+ 1 root root 116, 5 2008-05-06 10:33 /dev/snd/pcmC0D0c
crw-rw----+ 1 root root 116, 4 2008-05-06 10:33 /dev/snd/pcmC0D0p
crw-rw----+ 1 root root 116, 3 2008-05-06 09:30 /dev/snd/seq
crw-rw----+ 1 root root 116, 2 2008-05-06 09:30 /dev/snd/timer

But I can start jackd just fine as a normal (non-root) user after I
login to the console. No need to be root. 

I don't mean to say that there are _no_ problems, of course. I'm sure
there are. I'm sure there are also problems in all other distros as
well :-)

-- Fernando

[*] which would be REALLY good, I could just close shop and do something
else for a change. 




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