Download location (HTTP): http://www.alsa-project.org/alsa/ftp/driver/alsa-driver-0.9.2.tar.bz2 Download location (FTP): ftp://ftp.alsa-project.org/pub/driver/alsa-driver-0.9.2.tar.bz2 Version used: 0.9.2 Package size: 1.6 MB Estimated Disk space required: 22 MB (for all drivers) |
The alsa-driver package contains the alsa sound drivers. These are the next generation of sound drivers for Linux.
Before installing the alsa-drivers note that in your kernel configuration you should have Sound Card Support (CONFIG_SOUND) enabled but nothing else in the Sound menu (with the possible exception of TV Card Mixer support. In particular you should not have OSS Sound Modules enabled as this will cause problems when loading the alsa driver modules.
Install alsa-driver using the following commands as a template:
./configure \ --with-moddir=/lib/modules/<kernel-version>/kernel/drivers/sound/ \ --with-kernel=/lib/modules/<kernel-version>/build \ --with-sequencer=yes \ --with-oss=yes \ --with-isapnp=no \ --with-cards=<soundcards-to-compile> && make && make install |
If this is the first time you have installed the alsa drivers, you will need to create the /dev entries using the script provided in the alsa-driver source tree:
./snddevices |
<kernel-version> should be replaced with your kernel version, including any EXTRAVERSION such as -ac1 or -ac2. If you are using a normal kernel tarball, it will simply be the standard number (such as 2.4.19).
--with-sequencer=yes : This tells the alsa-driver package to build the sequencer modules for whichever soundcards you are building for. Most people want them so you will usually want to leave it set to yes.
--with-oss=yes : This tells the package to build the OSS/Free emulation modules. Again, most people want this so it's probably best to stick with yes.
--with-isapnp=no : Most sound cards these days are PCI and so ISA Plug and Play support isn't needed. If you are using an ISA soundcard, it's best to say yes here.
--with-cards=... : You can tell the script just to build the drivers for your particular sound card here. For full information on which drivers are available see ./configure --help. If you aren't sure which chipset your soundcard uses, have a look in CARDS-STATUS in the alsa-driver source tree. If you want to build all drivers (for some reason) then simply leave out the --with-cards statement entirely.
/etc/modules.conf
To configure the alsa drivers, you need to add some lines to /etc/modules.conf:
cat >> /etc/modules.conf << "EOF" alias char-major-14 soundcore alias char-major-116 snd alias snd-card-0 snd-<soundcard-name> alias sound-slot-0 snd-card-0 alias sound-service-0-0 snd-mixer-oss alias sound-service-0-1 snd-seq-oss alias sound-service-0-3 snd-pcm-oss alias sound-service-0-8 snd-seq-midi EOF |
<soundcard-name> needs to be replaced with the driver relevant to your soundcard. If you have more than one soundcard, you can add additional sections by repeating the above but changing the first 0 to 1 and so on.
After editing /etc/modules.conf you need to run depmod. If the drivers you have compiled are for the version of the kernel you are currently running, simply run
depmod |
depmod -a 2.4.19 -F /boot/System.map-2.4.19 |
The alsa-driver package contains the alsa sound card driversand include files
These are kernel modules which provide audio and MIDI functionality to the operating system.
These are installed in /usr/include/sound and are required to compile certain packages such as alsa-lib.