[Pkg-alsa-devel] Alsa-utils mixer init script

[Elimar Riesebieter]

* David Henningsson [110207 11:10 +0100]:
> Hi pkg-alsa-devel and congratulations on the 6.0 release! :-)
> 
> Ubuntu inherits a mixer init script from Debian. There are several issues
> with this script:
> 
> 1) Mic input is muted on boot - this is not terrible IMO but a minor
> annoyance for people who like things to work out of the box. I could
> probably fix this to just mute with the "nocap" option, without much work.
> That's the easy one.

Hmm, always as the user want. Some don't like to have the mic muted,
others like it. The same as with the snd-usb-audio stuff.....

> 2) Asynchronous problem - as Lennart Poettering pointed out [1] this script
> is executed asynchronously so it is not guaranteed to have finished when
> PulseAudio discovers the card. PulseAudio might take these mixer changes as
> changes by the user, and preserve them. His version is to execute a mixer
> restore script both on udev rule and on the file system showing up (?),
> since we don't know which one will happen first [2].
> 
> 3) Upstream has started their own solution with "alsactl init" the stuff in
> /usr/share/alsa/init - and so our solution is in conflict, and we don't use
> upstream's version.

Yes. This is since version 1.0.24.

> Anyway, since Ubuntu inherits this script from Debian, it makes sense to try
> to fix it at the Debian level. What are your opinions on this script? Should
> we throw it away it for upstream's "alsactl init" solution, and if so, how?

1.0.24 has an udev hook [0]. We have to test this first before
uploading. It is a good idea to replace alsa-utils initscript with
with a much more reliable udev solution since alsa-utils recommends
udev.

I propose to create a testpackage for testing first. What do you
think?

[0] http://www.alsa-project.org/main/index.php?title=Changes_v1.0.23_v1.0.24&action=edit&section=219

Elimar


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