No sound from multisession 2.01-highmem

[Flash]

After I created my Puppy201-highmem multisession DVD while running multisession Puppy2 alpha, all my settings and whatnot seemed to have been transferred from multisession Puppy2 alpha by simply shutting down with the new DVD in the drive. However I soon discovered that there was no sound.

I ran the Alsa wizard from the Setup icon and it barked, but when I click Start -> Multimedia -> Xtmix sound mixer the menu disappears and nothing else happens. I entered xtmix in rxvt and got this:

sh-3.00# xtmix
xtmix: Error opening mixer device /dev/mixer
FATAL: /dev/mixer probably does not exist or has no r/w permissions
sh-3.00#

Sure enough, Rox says /dev/xtmix is a file with 0 bytes.

The sound worked fine in the old multisession DVD. I thought I might be able to copy xtmix from there, but can't find it on the disk.

Any suggestions, snide comments, crackpot theories?

[MU]

no idea, just as feedback that for me it works with the himem-kernel.
So your problem might have to do with rebuilding the CD, not with the kernel.

Maybe that avoids searching a solution in the wrong direction.

Mark

[Nathan F]

Not sure how it happened but try this.

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mknod -m664 /dev/mixer c 14 0
mv -f /dev/mixer1 /dev/mixer

Hopefully that will get you going. You want to avoid deleting it outright because unionfs might create a 'deletion file' that will prevent creating a new one, which is why I suggest calling it by a different name first and then renaming it.

Nathan

[Flash]

Thanks Nathan. Here's what I get:

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sh-3.00# mknod -m664 /dev/mixer c 14 0 
mknod: /dev/mixer: File exists
sh-3.00# 

Should I continue on with the second line?

Mark, I'm sure you are right. I do not suspect the highmem kernel. It's probably something to do with the way I transferred my settings from the old multisession Puppy to the new one.

[Nathan F]

Sorry, I mistyped the command.

Code: Select all

mknod -m664 /dev/mixer1 c 14 0
mv -f /dev/mixer1 /dev/mixer

Nathan

[Flash]

Nathan,
I entered those two commands, by copying and pasting each of them at a time. Rxvt gave no errors. Still nothing happens when I try to start Xtmix. Also there is no speaker icon next to blinky.

[Nathan F]

I guess check the permissions on /dev/mixer, other than that I'm not sure right now. Maybe a kernel module is not getting loaded with the patched kernel? Your hardware is different than Mark's so it is like apples and oranges.

Nathan

[Flash]

It appears there is some reason to think highmem vmlinuz could be the cause of my problem. "Old_root" is a snapshot of the contents of the /root directory just before I saved to the new DVD. "New_root" is the /root directory of the new DVD. I have not installed or modified any programs or anything else I can think of in the new DVD, except vmlinuz. I've certainly never installed or even played around with Icewm.

[Nathan F]

Unleashed populates menus for jwm, fvwm95, and icewm at the time the iso is created, so those menus exist by default in the iso, ready to be used when a new WM is installed. When you boot up a newer version of Puppy the upgrade script backs all three up before getting the new versions off the cd, which is what appears to have happened here. I don't think this is anything insidious here relating to the kernel.

However it is quite likely that the new kernel has something to do with losing sound support nonetheless. I would try booting a pristine Puppy, check what sound modulesare loaded, and make sure the same ones are loaded when you boot the multisession disk. Also, any time you recompile the kernel it is a good idea to recompile any kernel modules as well, I don't think the fix you mentioned did this. Maybe ask the person who posted the highmem kernel if they built the modules and if they could make a tarball available, then grab your sound module out of it.

Alternatively, it looks like Barry has taken note of it and may use the highmem option in an upcoming release. So be sure to give feedback during beta testing if he does, so a solution can be found.

Nathan

[Flash]

Thanks, Nathan. I only meant that since the new kernel was the only thing I changed before these entries in /root showed up, it seems reasonable to suppose that it may have made other unexpected changes. If the sound is the only thing broken it'll be pretty impressive.

I don't think I want to try compiling a kernel just yet, given the trouble it took to get this far. I'll wait for the next version of Puppy. I hope it has highmem. I'll be happy to do whatever I can to help it along.