[Pkg-alsa-devel] Bug#497581: Bug#497581: Upgrading alsa-base broke the softvol plugin

[Christian Ohm]

On Saturday,  6 September 2008 at 13:30, Elimar Riesebieter wrote:
> * Christian Ohm [080902 23:20 +0200]
> > Package: alsa-base Version: 1.0.16-2 Severity: important
> > 
> > Hello,
> > 
> > I am using a M-Audio Audiophile 24/96 sound card, which has no
> > hardware mixer.  So I modified /usr/share/alsa/cards/ICE1712.conf
> > to make it use the softvol plugin (diff follows) to be able to use
> > the usual mixer applets. After a dist-upgrade the volume control
> > didn't work anymore, downgrading alsa-base from version
> > 1.0.17.dfsg-1 to 1.0.16-2 made it work again.
> 
> Does the volume control works witout your patch and 1.0.17.dfsg
> installed? I cant't reproduce the behaviour as I have no Audiophile
> handy :(

The card has two separate channels for left and right, and those still work
with 1.0.17. But for volume control in applications I can use only one, so I
added the softvol plugin. Another way would be to combine those two channels
into a new virtual one, but I don't know if that's possible.

I'm not sure if it's possible to reproduce without a ICE1712/Envy24 card; I
guess the softvol plugin still works for other cards. One thing I noticed is
that libasound2 in unstable is still at 1.0.16. Perhaps I'll try 1.0.17 from
experimental later when I have some time.

But this bug is really puzzling. The only relevant differences between the
1.0.16 and 1.0.17 packages seem to be in /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base, and as far
as I could see none of the changes are even relevant for my card. For
reference, those are the snd-modules I use (with 1.0.16):

snd                    47780  39 snd_ice1712,snd_ak4xxx_adda,snd_cs8427,snd_intel8x0,snd_ac97_codec,snd_i2c,snd_mpu401_uart,snd_pcm_oss,snd_pcm,snd_mixer_oss,snd_seq_oss,snd_rawmidi,snd_seq,snd_timer,snd_seq_device
snd_ac97_codec        100804  2 snd_ice1712,snd_intel8x0
snd_ak4xxx_adda         8640  2 snd_ice1712,snd_ice17xx_ak4xxx
snd_cs8427              8320  1 snd_ice1712
snd_i2c                 5256  2 snd_ice1712,snd_cs8427
snd_ice1712            59076  17 
snd_ice17xx_ak4xxx      3968  1 snd_ice1712
snd_intel8x0           29604  0 
snd_mixer_oss          15240  1 snd_pcm_oss
snd_mpu401_uart         7768  1 snd_ice1712
snd_page_alloc          8584  2 snd_intel8x0,snd_pcm
snd_pcm                63468  9 snd_ice1712,snd_intel8x0,snd_ac97_codec,snd_pcm_oss
snd_pcm_oss            36544  0 
snd_rawmidi            20160  2 snd_mpu401_uart,snd_seq_midi
snd_seq                48824  6 snd_seq_dummy,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_midi,snd_seq_midi_event
snd_seq_device          7380  5 snd_seq_dummy,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_midi,snd_rawmidi,snd_seq
snd_seq_dummy           3460  0 
snd_seq_midi            7008  0 
snd_seq_midi_event      7112  2 snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_midi
snd_seq_oss            30864  0 
snd_timer              20700  7 snd_pcm,snd_seq

As I said, when I have some time, I'll experiment a bit, and see if this list
changes with 1.0.17.

Best regards,
Christian Ohm