OSS emulation and other problems with 9.3

14 Oct 2005

      Hi,

I've been trying to get rid of the arts server.  In order to run the 
ALSA-agnostic skype (closed 32-bit binary), I created the following 
wrapper script, which I named 'osswrap':

# File ~/osswrap
export LD_PRELOAD=$LD_PRELOAD:/usr/lib/libaoss.so
exec $@

[ NOTE:  The second command is VERY important.  If I include the first 
line in, say, '/etc/profile.local', the shells do weird things, as if 
the $LD-PRELOAD variable takes control of everything.  I am speaking 
from memory here. So, I decided to go with the script. The 'exec' 
command basically starts a new shell with the new $LD_PRELOAD.]

I try to invoke skype with './osswrap skype'.  It almost runs  --almost, 
but not quite.  For a couple of seconds the sound is fine but then it 
goes quiet and I get the following errors:

volume_adjust: SOUND_MIXER_WRITE_IGAIN failed: Invalid argument
read error, res = -1 , handle = 39
read error, res = -1 , handle = 48

I run all this on a Compaq Presario R3240 laptop (AMD64-based, of 
course), with an nVidia chipset and nVidia graphics card (the latter is 
probably irrelevant here).  My ~/.asoundrc file is as follows:

pcm.dsp0 {
        type plug
        slave.pcm "dmix"
}

pcm.dsp {
        type plug
        slave.pcm "dmix"
}

pcm.dsp-1 {
        type plug
        slave.pcm "dmix"
}

pcm.dsp1 {
        type plug
        slave.pcm "dmix"
}

pcm.dsp2 {
        type plug
        slave.pcm "dmix"
}

ctl.mixer0 {
        type hw
        card 0
}

(I know I may have too many devices declared, but this is what I ended 
up with after many iterations.  Probably most of these devices are useless.)

The reason I am trying to get away from arts is that artsdsp seems to be 
inordinately slow after I installed several cryptography-related modules 
via YAST (actually booting into KDE seems to have slowed down, too).  I 
am not sure if these newly-installed programs are the culprit; I did try 
to remove the modules 'cryptoloop' and 'twofish' (which did not get 
loaded before), but that did not improve things.

If I run skype "straight," that is, just invoking it via 'skype', it 
runs alright, BUT it monopolizes the sound card.  I am running 9.3.  
Could there be something wrong with the oss emulation library?

TIA

CF

OSS emulation and other problems with 9.3

Constantine 'Gus' Fantanas