Installing ALSA (was C-Media PCI Sound Card & music CDs)

[Calum]

this is probably not a slackware specific problem, so if not, do shift it to general applications or whatever.

anyway, the situation is as following. i currently have a setup with a working red hat and a working slackware (rh8, slack9), on a machine with a C-Media PCI sound card (which claims all sorts of special 3d surround stuff in windows, but i'm not bothered about that).

Basically i have xmms installed and the mp3 plugin in both systems (and amp and mpg123 in slack) which is fine because i can play mp3s and other sound files fine through the sound card (i think this only works when i use Arts, but not if i try to use eSound or OSS, perhaps OSS works in slack but not RH, not sure). Anyway, i cannot listen to music CDs using this sound card. I try to use cdp and kscd to play the CDs and everything works fine, it runs the CD round and seems to be playing it, but there is NO sound at all. i've been up and down in red hat over this to no avail and i thought it was just a red hat 8 thing, but now i am annoyed to find this seems to be the case in slackware 9 too! Now this card used to work fine in mandrake... why? because the mandrake installer installs alsa for you by default. alsa works with my sound card (to the degree that i want it to anyway, i think it probably doesn't do all the 3d whiz bang stuff, but who cares).

so. i now need to install alsa in slackware. i did try once to install alsa in red hat but due to the exttaneous factor of me not having a clue what i was doing i got very confused and it failed to work for me. so anyway, i'm staring at the huge alsa howto again and wondering how to do it all without following umptytum hundred pages of instructions, when google turned up this and this. Most interesting and hopefully very helpful. Now you see i already have the answer to my question right there, but will i make mistakes? basically i am asking if anybody has set up alsa already and if so, do they have any words of wisdom to impart et cetera?

One other thing, Doogee has the same sound card and also uses slack 9, doogee did you get your C-Media card to play CDs? pop one in now and see if it works, if so did you do anything special other than '/sbin/modprobe cmpci'?

thanks in advance for any comments.

[Doogee]

ill check tomorrow, ill have to find a cd*, and also check if i have that analog cord in (i do but i might have put it on the wrong way

* i dont have many cds, im an mp3'ey person

[Calum]

Code: Select all

root@boxotrix:/usr/src/alsa/alsa-driver-0.9.2# ./configure --with-cards=cmipci -with-sequencer=yes && make && make install
checking for gcc... gcc
checking for C compiler default output... a.out
checking whether the C compiler works... yes
checking whether we are cross compiling... no
checking for executable suffix...
checking for object suffix... o
checking whether we are using the GNU C compiler... yes
checking whether gcc accepts -g... yes
checking for ranlib... ranlib
checking for a BSD compatible install... /usr/bin/ginstall -c
checking how to run the C preprocessor... gcc -E
checking for ANSI C header files... yes
checking for gcc option to accept ANSI C... none needed
checking for an ANSI C-conforming const... yes
checking for inline... inline
checking whether time.h and sys/time.h may both be included... yes
checking whether gcc needs -traditional... no
checking for current directory... /usr/src/alsa/alsa-driver-0.9.2
checking cross compile...
checking for directory with kernel source... /lib/modules/2.4.20/build
checking for kernel version... The file  lib/modules/2.4.20/build/include/linux/version.h does not
exist.
Please, install the package with full kernel sources for your distribution or use --with-kernel=dir option to specify another directory with kernel
sources (default is /usr/src/linux).
root@boxotrix:/usr/src/alsa/alsa-driver-0.9.2# ./configure --with-cards=cmipci --with-kernel=/usr/src/linux-2.4.20 -with-sequencer=yes && make && make install
checking for gcc... gcc
checking for C compiler default output... a.out
checking whether the C compiler works... yes
checking whether we are cross compiling... no
checking for executable suffix...
checking for object suffix... o
checking whether we are using the GNU C compiler... yes
checking whether gcc accepts -g... yes
checking for ranlib... ranlib
checking for a BSD compatible install... /usr/bin/ginstall -c
checking how to run the C preprocessor... gcc -E
checking for ANSI C header files... yes
checking for gcc option to accept ANSI C... none needed
checking for an ANSI C-conforming const... yes
checking for inline... inline
checking whether time.h and sys/time.h may both be included... yes
checking whether gcc needs -traditional... no
checking for current directory... /usr/src/alsa/alsa-driver-0.9.2
checking cross compile...
checking for directory with kernel source... /usr/src/linux-2.4.20
checking for kernel version... The file /usr/src/linux-2.4.20/include/linux/version.h does not exist.
Please, install the package with full kernel sources for your distribution
or use --with-kernel=dir option to specify another directory with kernel
sources (default is /usr/src/linux).

root@boxotrix:/usr/src/alsa/alsa-driver-0.9.2# find /usr/src/linux/ -name version.h -print
/usr/src/linux/include/pcmcia/version.h
/usr/src/linux/arch/i386/math-emu/version.h

root@boxotrix:/usr/src/alsa/alsa-driver-0.9.2# find / -name version.h -print
/mnt/redhat/usr/include/linux/version.h
/mnt/redhat/usr/include/sp/lib/version.h
/mnt/redhat/usr/src/linux-2.4.18-14/arch/i386/math-emu/version.h
/mnt/redhat/usr/src/linux-2.4.18-14/drivers/addon/cipe/version.h
/mnt/redhat/usr/src/linux-2.4.18-14/drivers/addon/iscsi/version.h
/mnt/redhat/usr/src/linux-2.4.18-14/include/linux/version.h
/mnt/redhat/usr/src/linux-2.4.18-14/include/pcmcia/version.h
/usr/src/alsa/alsa-driver-0.9.2/include/version.h
/usr/src/alsa/alsa-driver-0.9.2/alsa-kernel/include/version.h
/usr/src/linux-2.4.20/include/pcmcia/version.h
/usr/src/linux-2.4.20/arch/i386/math-emu/version.h /usr/include/libguile/version.h
/usr/include/linux/version.h
/usr/include/libgtop-2.0/glibtop/version.h


hello, now as you can see, the alsa i am trying to install wants to see the linux version.h file and for some reason i do not have it. as you can see, my red hat 8 installation has got the requisite file, but this is for kernel version 2.4.18, and i am trying to install this in slack 9 which has kernel 2.4.20.
Now the kernel source i have in slackware in /usr/src/linux-2.4.20 is for version 2.4.20 but is not the source which was used to build my kernel (well as far as i know it is, but it's not the same copy). the kernel is off the slack CD, and the source i have is downloaded from kernel.org. also, this is the latest version of the alsa driver as far as i know (from the site it looks as though it is from last week i think). so any ideas what i can do about this? why is it so sure i should have this file and why don't i? also, why does it need this file anyway? i suppose it needs to compile a module for the specific build of kernel...

hmm, anyway, any ideas on how to get round this? my howto doesn't appear to know about this little hiccup...
thanks in advance..........