[Pkg-alsa-devel] Bug#274456: alsa-utils: please make alsactl store/restore more devfs-friendly

[Ryan Underwood]

Package: alsa-utils
Version: 1.0.4-1
Severity: minor


alsactl restore takes a long time on a slow devfs machine.  The problem
is the following:
open("/dev/snd/controlC1", O_RDONLY)    = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
open("/dev/aloadC1", O_RDONLY)          = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
open("/dev/snd/controlC2", O_RDONLY)    = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
open("/dev/aloadC2", O_RDONLY)          = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
open("/dev/snd/controlC3", O_RDONLY)    = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
open("/dev/aloadC3", O_RDONLY)          = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
open("/dev/snd/controlC4", O_RDONLY)    = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
open("/dev/aloadC4", O_RDONLY)          = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
open("/dev/snd/controlC5", O_RDONLY)    = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
open("/dev/aloadC5", O_RDONLY)          = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
open("/dev/snd/controlC6", O_RDONLY)    = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
.....

Each of these attempts causes about a 1 second delay on my machine
(P120).  I presume this is due to devfs trying to modprobe stuff in the
background.

A more efficient method would probably be to opendir() and scan through
the directory entries to check for existence.


-- System Information:
Debian Release: testing/unstable
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (990, 'testing'), (500, 'unstable'), (1, 'experimental')
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Kernel: Linux 2.4.25
Locale: LANG=en_US, LC_CTYPE=en_US

Versions of packages alsa-utils depends on:
ii  alsa-base                1.0.4-3         ALSA sound driver common files
ii  dialog                   0.9b-20040421-1 Displays user-friendly dialog boxe
ii  libasound2               1.0.5-1         Advanced Linux Sound Architecture 
ii  libc6                    2.3.2.ds1-12    GNU C Library: Shared libraries an
ii  libncurses5              5.4-4           Shared libraries for terminal hand
ii  module-init-tools        3.0-pre10-4     tools for managing Linux kernel mo
ii  modutils                 2.4.26-1        Linux module utilities
ii  pciutils                 1:2.1.11-8      Linux PCI Utilities (for 2.*.* ker
ii  whiptail                 0.51.6-3        Displays user-friendly dialog boxe

-- no debconf information