Making OSS sound work.

[Doug Laidlaw]

I have an app which shows voice from the mic. getting as far as
pavucontrol, but no further. I have installed aoss and libalsa-oss0.
From forums, it seems that I need to load the snd* modules as well.
How do I do this? I am running Mageia, with all its directories ending
in ".d" to replace readable config files, and with systemd.

Ah, for the good old user-friendly days!

Doug.

[Ivan Shmakov]

>>>>> Doug Laidlaw <laid...@hotkey.net.au> writes:

> I have an app which shows voice from the mic. getting as far as
> pavucontrol, but no further. I have installed aoss and libalsa-oss0.
> From forums, it seems that I need to load the snd* modules as well.

I've never used aoss myself, but I assume you need either that
/or/ the modules, not both. Cf. [1].

[1] The aoss script for OSS emulation // ALSA wiki.
URI: https://web.archive.org/web/20170826/http://alsa.opensrc.org:80/Aoss

> How do I do this?

# modprobe -- snd-pcm-oss

At least then $ mpg123 -o oss -- file.mp3 starts working for me.

You may also want # modprobe -- snd-mixer-oss.

[...]

--
FSF associate member #7257 http://am-1.org/~ivan/

[Doug Laidlaw]

Thanks, Ivan. Where do I put that to make it permanent on bootup?

[Bit Twister]

A quick read from man modprobe would suggest /etc/modprobe.d
For examples:
$ ls /etc/modprobe.d
00_modprobe.conf blacklist-compat.conf lockd.conf
01_mga-config.conf blacklist-mga.conf snd-oss.conf
20_xx__custom.conf ipw-no-associate.conf visor.conf

[Ivan Shmakov]

>>>>> Doug Laidlaw <laid...@hotkey.net.au> writes:
>>>>> On 21/07/18 18:24, Ivan Shmakov wrote:

[...]

>> # modprobe -- snd-pcm-oss

>> At least then $ mpg123 -o oss -- file.mp3 starts working for me.

>> You may also want # modprobe -- snd-mixer-oss.

> Thanks, Ivan. Where do I put that to make it permanent on bootup?

At least on Debian-based systems, there's the /etc/modules file
which names the modules to load on bootup. Alternatively, there
may be an rc.local file somewhere in /etc which is a program in
shell that runs on every boot.

[Ivan Shmakov]

>>>>> Bit Twister <BitTw...@mouse-potato.com> writes:
>>>>> On Sat, 21 Jul 2018 22:05:19 +1000, Doug Laidlaw wrote:
>>>>> On 21/07/18 18:24, Ivan Shmakov wrote:

[...]

>>> # modprobe -- snd-pcm-oss

>>> At least then $ mpg123 -o oss -- file.mp3 starts working for me.

>>> You may also want # modprobe -- snd-mixer-oss.

>> Thanks, Ivan. Where do I put that to make it permanent on bootup?

> A quick read from man modprobe would suggest /etc/modprobe.d

> For examples:

> $ ls /etc/modprobe.d
> 00_modprobe.conf blacklist-compat.conf lockd.conf
> 01_mga-config.conf blacklist-mga.conf snd-oss.conf
> 20_xx__custom.conf ipw-no-associate.conf visor.conf

IMO, these files are supposed to hold options passed to modules
when they are loaded; or if a module should be prevented from
loading ("blacklisted.")

Whether the module gets loaded at all is a different matter
altogether.

[Doug Laidlaw]

On 21/07/18 22:11, Bit Twister wrote:
>> Thanks, Ivan. Where do I put that to make it permanent on bootup?
>
> A quick read from man modprobe would suggest /etc/modprobe.d
> For examples:
> $ ls /etc/modprobe.d
> 00_modprobe.conf blacklist-compat.conf lockd.conf
> 01_mga-config.conf blacklist-mga.conf snd-oss.conf
> 20_xx__custom.conf ipw-no-associate.conf visor.conf

I seem to have the syntax for those files wrong, and anyway, the direct
modprobe commands didn't do what I want. It sounds as though I am
hunting for the wrong remedy.

Doug.

[Bit Twister]

I believe you are correct, so I'll guess /etc/modprobe.preload.d/
would be a better choice for getting the module loaded.

Of course if the OP was to get loaded, this may not help
$ cat /etc/modprobe.d/snd-oss.conf
# We need to ensure that no ALSA OSS compatibility modules are loaded so
# we can use osspd easily
blacklist snd_pcm_oss
blacklist snd_mixer_oss
blacklist snd_seq_oss

[David W. Hodgins]

On Sat, 21 Jul 2018 08:24:50 -0400, Ivan Shmakov <iv...@siamics.net> wrote:
> IMO, these files are supposed to hold options passed to modules
> when they are loaded; or if a module should be prevented from
> loading ("blacklisted.")

And in this particular case, on a Mageia 6 x86_64 system ...

$ cat /etc/modprobe.d/snd-oss.conf
# We need to ensure that no ALSA OSS compatibility modules are loaded so
# we can use osspd easily
blacklist snd_pcm_oss
blacklist snd_mixer_oss
blacklist snd_seq_oss

The osspd daemon is in the ossp package, which has the description ...
OSS Proxy Daemon is Linux userland OSS sound device (/dev/[a]dsp
and /dev/mixer) implementation using CUSE. Currently it supports
forwarding OSS sound streams to PulseAudio and ALSA.

$ systemctl -a status osspd.service
should show the service is active (running)

$ ll /dev/*dsp*
crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 14, 12 Jul 16 21:31 /dev/adsp
crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 14, 3 Jul 16 21:31 /dev/dsp

With those devices present, oss should be working without the need
to load the snd_*_oss modules.

Regards, Dave Hodgins

--
Change dwho...@nomail.afraid.org to davidw...@teksavvy.com for
email replies.

[Doug Laidlaw]

Thanks Dave. I installed the package; now I need to undo my fumbling.

[Doug Laidlaw]

On 22/07/18 04:36, Doug Laidlaw wrote:
> Thanks Dave.  I installed the package; now I need to undo my fumbling.

There is a good description of osspd at

https://github.com/libfuse/osspd

It is a bit technical, but gives plenty of explanations of technical
concepts. It does say that osspd must be loaded first, so my own
efforts need to be removed.

Doug.

[David W. Hodgins]

On Sat, 21 Jul 2018 14:36:57 -0400, Doug Laidlaw <laid...@hotkey.net.au> wrote:

>> The osspd daemon is in the ossp package, which has the description ...

> Thanks Dave. I installed the package; now I need to undo my fumbling.

Made me curious why it was installed in my system, as it's only required
by the packages hxtools-sound and plopp, neither of which I have installed.

Found it.
$ rpm -q --whatrecommends ossp
wmix-3.2-7.mga6
wmsmixer-0.5.1-7.mga6

I have both of those packages installed.

$ urpmq --whatrequires-recursive wmsmixer|sort -u
task-windowmaker
task-wmdockapps
wmsmixer

So I have it on my system as I have all of the available desktop
environments installed on my system.

$ rpm -q -f /usr/share/xsessions/*|sort -u|wc -l
26

I'm recommending to the packagers that it be changed to be required by
the pulseaudio package and alsa packages.
https://bugs.mageia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=23337

[Chris Cox]

padsp program-name