Bug 60687 – /etc/init.d/alsasound script fails with Linux-2.6.8

• Status: RESOLVED TEST-REQUEST
• Product: Gentoo Linux

[Description Richard A Downing 2004-08-17 09:42:16 UTC]

alsasound greps /proc/asound/cards - this never returns.  If this is removed the same script fails with an awk command later.

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1. Build Linux-2.6.8-gentoo from gentoo-dev-sources.  Configured with sound-card, but not alsa.
2. Boot this kernel and emerge alsa-driver-1.0.5a.  rc-update add alsasound boot.
3. Try /etc/init.d/alsasound start.  This never terminates.

Actual Results:  
The process is running grep on /proc/asound/cards.  This will never terminate. 
cat /proc/asound/cards also never terminates, it just repeats infinitely
outputting the same string over and over.

Expected Results:  
If Linux-2.6.8 is right (i.e. the change is deliberate) the the alsasound script
needs to access /proc/asound.cards in a different way.

[Comment 1 Seemant Kulleen (RETIRED) 2004-08-17 13:30:31 UTC]

*** Bug 60709 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

[Comment 2 Jeremy Huddleston (RETIRED) 2004-08-29 03:45:38 UTC]

Does changing the version of alsa-utils fix the problem?  If not, this looks like probably buggy drivers in the 2.6.8 kernel...

[Comment 3 Klaus-J. Wolf 2004-09-03 18:14:17 UTC]

I can confirm that there is a problem with gentoo-dev-sources-2.6.8-r3 and alsa-utils-1.0.6. On my system, the mixer settings get not restored correctly. Instead, the mixer gets the default settings (all mute, 0). The problem does not appear with a 2.6.7-r13 kernel.

[Comment 4 Jeremy Huddleston (RETIRED) 2004-09-05 15:55:33 UTC]

then this is a problem with the alsa drivers built into the kernel...

[Comment 5 jeff kolber 2004-09-18 18:46:17 UTC]

I am not 100% sure on this but I started having this problem only after adding in alsa-oss for backward compatability and then rebuilding alsa-tools.  Prior to that /proc/asound/cards listed only the one card -- hacking the init script probably will not allow me to have more than one driver

[Comment 6 jeff kolber 2004-09-19 07:39:38 UTC]

more experiments and I discovered this situation occurs ONLY when alsa is loaded dynamically -- if you compile alsa into the kernel then you get normal behavior in  /proc/asound -- there is some difference between the drivers from the alsa-driver (1.0.5a) package and the drivers in the kernel (2.6.8.1) -- so this is NOT a problem with the init script itself, but rather a problem (perhaps an infinite loop?) when loading alsa (whenever /proc/asound is created) 

[Comment 7 Daniel Drake (RETIRED) 2004-09-29 02:26:40 UTC]

Could you please test and see if the issue is present in 2.6.9-rc2? Thanks.

[Comment 8 Klaus-J. Wolf 2004-10-08 19:54:27 UTC]

Problem as described in comment #3 is related to KDE on my system (only occurs on runlevel 5).

[Comment 9 Klaus-J. Wolf 2004-10-08 20:29:09 UTC]

The stupid reason for my problem was kmix of kde-3.3 with "restore volumes on login" set. (New feature, it appears.)
Sorry.

[Comment 10 Daniel Drake (RETIRED) 2004-10-11 16:20:30 UTC]

Richard, please reopen if you can test 2.6.9-rc4 or newer. Thanks.