[Asterisk-Users] Problems with asterisk and gnophone on Gentoo box

[Kevin]

On Friday 19 March 2004 08:42, Alastair Maw wrote:
> Mine:
> > snd-pcm                60960   0  [snd-via82xx snd-pcm-oss]
>
> Yours:
> > snd-pcm                65828   0  [snd-pcm-oss]
>
> Note that you don't actually have a sound driver loaded there! You
> should have snd-nvaudio listed.

Hi Alastair and John-

With this message, I'm reporting at least partial success.  This is 
shaping up to be a longish message, though, so I'll apologize for that 
in advance.

Thanks again to you both for your replies.

Alastair, I think that your post here has turned me on to the right 
answer, although I'm still working on verifying that.

Your mention of OSS working under xmms and the absence of my nvaudio 
driver in the snd-pcm line prompted me to look hard at my nvaudio 
driver.  It's from nVidia corp, and from studying the source code from 
the driver, I get the distinct impression that it's an OSS driver, not 
an ALSA driver (though it never comes out and says either way).

The ALSA matrix recommends the intel8x0 driver for nForce chipsets, so 
I'm giving it a try.  At first blush, I think it's working, but there 
are problems with KDE now:

KDE is constantly complaining with a dialog box:

Sound server fatal error:
cpu overload, aborting
	[OK]

This in spite of me disabling the sound system in kcontrol.

artsd keeps starting and restarting for no apparent reason and/or 
whenever I use a KDE sound app like JuK---perhaps that's what it's 
supposed to do, but why it's overloading the cpu is still a mystery 
(and looking at top verifies that this is indeed true).  I've read 
about disabling arts altogether in KDE and using alsa to take it's 
place somehow, but I'll have to research that elsewhere.

xmms works with no apparent problems; with the libOSS.so and the 
libALSA.so plugins.  

Most importantly, asterisk does seem to be working now, although the 
Allison Smith Voice is extremely hiccupy.

gnophone still seems iffy.  Sometimes I start it and get:
bash-2.05b# gnophone
Loaded and activated '/usr/lib/gnophone/modules/audio-oss.so'
Loaded and activated '/usr/lib/gnophone/modules/audio-phone.so'
iax.c line 654 in iax_init: Started on port 5036
Listening on port 5036
Initialized phone core
No audio devices found
bash-2.05b#

and then sometimes I start it and get an apparently successful startup 
(window pops up), but some complaints on the command line:
bash-2.05b# gnophone
New input space:  0 of 40 64 byte fragments (0 bytes left)
New output space:  40 of 40 64 byte fragments (2560 bytes left)
Registering Unknown Audio device on /dev/dsp
Loaded and activated '/usr/lib/gnophone/modules/audio-oss.so'
Loaded and activated '/usr/lib/gnophone/modules/audio-phone.so'
iax.c line 654 in iax_init: Started on port 5036
Listening on port 5036
Initialized phone core
New input space:  0 of 40 64 byte fragments (0 bytes left)
New output space:  40 of 40 64 byte fragments (2560 bytes left)
No bytes to read
Error reading voice data on Unknown Audio device on /dev/dsp
Running GUI

I'm still fiddling with my setup here and am hopeful about getting all 
things sound-related to work.  However, if this doesn't work, then I'm 
inclined to think that the snd-intel8x0 driver does not fully support 
my hardware:

00:06.0 Multimedia audio controller: nVidia Corporation nForce2 AC97 
Audio Controler (MCP) (rev a1)

Does anyone here have this hardware working with asterisk through 
ALSA-emulated OSS or plain OSS?  If so, what driver are you using?  
snd-intel8x0?  Any particular settings I need to tweak to fix the 
hiccupy Voice?

John, what sort of hardware are you using with your snd-intel8x0 driver?

In any case, at least my lsmod output looks better:

bash-2.05b$ lsmod|grep snd
snd-pcm-oss            39140   0
snd-mixer-oss          13392   0 [snd-pcm-oss]
snd-intel8x0           20296   0 (autoclean)
snd-ac97-codec         48428   0 (autoclean) [snd-intel8x0]
snd-mpu401-uart         3904   0 (autoclean) [snd-intel8x0]
snd-rawmidi            14688   0 (autoclean) [snd-mpu401-uart]
snd-pcm                65828   0 (autoclean) [snd-pcm-oss snd-intel8x0]
gameport                1692   0 (autoclean) [snd-intel8x0]
snd-page-alloc          6452   0 (autoclean) [snd-intel8x0 snd-pcm]
snd-seq-oss            27456   0 (unused)
snd-seq-midi-event      3840   0 [snd-seq-oss]
snd-seq                40528   2 [snd-seq-oss snd-seq-midi-event]
snd-timer              15556   0 [snd-pcm snd-seq]
snd-seq-device          4176   0 [snd-rawmidi snd-seq-oss snd-seq]
snd                    33892   0 [snd-pcm-oss snd-mixer-oss snd-intel8x0 
snd-ac97-codec snd-mpu401-uart snd-rawmidi snd-pcm snd-seq-oss 
snd-seq-midi-event snd-seq snd-timer snd-seq-device]
soundcore               4196   6 [snd]
bash-2.05b$

>
> If OSS is working under xmms, it looks to me like your kernel has OSS
> support built in. You need to disable this, otherwise ALSA will get
> terribly confused and won't work.

If it is, then it's only as a module (which I don't think is loaded), 
not in the kernel executable itself.  From my .config file I have:

CONFIG_SOUND=m
CONFIG_SOUND_ICH=m
CONFIG_SOUND_OSS=m

As I said above, I think that nvaudio driver module is an OSS driver.  
That's probably why xmms worked.  Now that it's unloaded, I think my 
kernel is free of native OSS code.

>
> You can use either ALSA or OSS, not both. If you use ALSA you can
> then put an OSS compatibility layer on top of it. But get ALSA
> working first, then worry about the OSS layer.

That makes sense.  I seem to have both ALSA and the OSS layer working in 
some respects now, but not all.

>
> Check your dmesg output for ALSA failing to load due to this.

Nothing there.

>
> Alternatively, get rid of ALSA entirely and just keep OSS (although
> this isn't recommended - ALSA is much nicer).

I agree.  I'll keep working on ALSA unless I learn that the intel8x0 
driver doesn't fully support my hardware.

Thanks again to you both for your help and patience.


-Kevin