11.2 learning curve for sound ?

Thus far up to openSUSE-11.1, I have stuck with KDE3. But with 11.2 I am thinking I will seriously try out 11.2’s KDE4.

So yesterday I installed 11.2 milestone3, and this time I went to Packman and installed some of the Packman 11.1 rpms on 11.2. Not the best of solutions, but as an interim for some testing, it works.

But there were some strange things I encountered on 11.2.

The sound did not initially work as reliably (thus far) as I experienced on 11.1, as I encountered more instances of devices not letting go of the audio driver. This was a first impression, and I’m probably going to have to use “lsof” to get precise details if I observe this again.

When I went to look for the /etc/modprobe.d/sound file, I did not find it! Instead there was a file called 50-sound.conf which had the content I expected in the “sound” file. … I’m wondering now is this a milestone3 quirk, or has openSUSE changed the name of the config files? I’m beginning to expect the later, and I believe this is something that I will need to watch.

Anyway, the long and short of it is that it appears I will have a learning curve for 11.2 if I wish to continue helping users with their sound (when 11.2 is released).

Even with packman 11.1 libxine1 and libxine1-codecs, my 11.2 sound has worked fine with amorok2 and kaffeine with libdvdccs (videlan repo) for commercial DVD.

However, I still have the Kmix muted on boot every time, on M3 (as on 11.1). How about yours??

I have upgraded with zypper dup from M1>M2>M3. I assume you did a clean install, that may have sorted the Kmix inconvenience, I wonder?

A recent update (possibly the latest kernel) to 11.1 has resulted in that being intermittently muted on all my 11.1 PCs. But its so simply to simply click unmute, and its so obvious it is muted, and it is intermittent, I have not given it a second thought.

I have not observed this behaviour yet on 11.2 miletone3, but it could be there.

Possibly, but my guess would be no.

oldcpu wrote:

> A recent update (possibly the latest kernel) to 11.1 has resulted in
> that being intermittently muted on all my 11.1 PCs. But its so simply to
> simply click unmute, and its so obvious it is muted, and it is
> intermittent, I have not given it a second thought.
>
> I have not observed this behaviour yet on 11.2 miletone3, but it could
> be there.

Since my “fix” occasioned by changing my login splash screen, sound in 11.2-
M3 KDE4.3 RC2 has worked - after a fashion. The start-up chimes worked as
did Flash, but BBC i-Player didn’t.

Now I’ve installed Mplayer plug-in and it worked after re-boot but log-in
chimes seemed to have gone walkabout. Also, Flash seems to have gone silent
again. The main channel on Kmix sound is muted every time I login but sound,
such as it is, still works with that muted.


Graham P Davis, Bracknell, Berks., UK. E-mail: newsman not newsboy
“I wear the cheese. It does not wear me.”

My Kmix mute is solid on both 11.1 and 11.2. Although I agree it’s just an inconvenience and probably a low priority bug, I prefer solid over intermittent. I believe (iirc) on 11.1 it happened after last kernel update accompanied by a P/A lib update, and on 11.2 it arrived with M2.

On upgrade to M3, the first initialization of the DE is painfully slow and kmix can take > 6min to appear (others have reported). This improved over the next few reboots, or clearing ~/.kde4 improve it. My point is that during the slower period, the “start-up chimes” were heard to begin and then cut off abruptly. Maybe a clue, maybe not. During the normal, quicker DE start, it happens too fast to hear anything.

Strange, I have the normal /etc/modprobe.d/sound file but no 50-sound.conf file.

Since I upgraded from M1 to M2/M3, you may need someone with a clean-installed M3 to confirm.

Hmm … on my 32-bit athlon-1100 with 1GB RAM, for KDE4, I think it took about 1/2 of that time on the first initializsation, which is about what I would expect, although possibly a bit slower.

consused wrote:

>
> oldcpu;2013941 Wrote:
>> …When I went to look for the , I did not find it! Instead there was a
>> file called 50-sound.conf which had the content I expected in the
>> “sound” file. … I’m wondering now is this a milestone3 quirk, or has
>> openSUSE changed the name of the config files? I’m beginning to expect
>> the later, and I believe this is something that I will need to watch…
> Strange, I have the normal /etc/modprobe.d/sound file but no
> 50-sound.conf file.
>
> Since I upgraded from M1 to M2/M3, you may need someone with a
> clean-installed M3 to confirm.
>
>

Mine was a clean M3 and I can confirm the file is 50-sound.conf. All the
files in modprobe.d begin with numbers.


Graham P Davis, Bracknell, Berks., UK. E-mail: newsman not newsboy
“I wear the cheese. It does not wear me.”

Hmm, numbering sound config files reminds me of the system of udev-rules files where the number is used as a priority level. IIRC 50- is used by the system, allowing applications (e.g. VBox) to go higher or lower when generating their own device-support files.

Not sure how that would compare to my 64bit sempron 3100+ (1.8GHz) 512MB RAM (32bit 11.2), but see this thread about this, i.e. Posts #14 & #15.

I since believe that deleting ~/.kde4 settings got me back to appropriate response times (needed as I am upgrading).

Sorry @oldcpu, cancel that post. Red-herring and red face :shame:. Must be having a bad morning, but glad @Cloddy isn’t. I was on 11.1 at the time when I checked /etc/modprobe.d/sound file. I am now back on my 11.2 M3 and it’s the same as yours with /etc/modprobe.d/50-sound.conf containing the appropriate definition.