[PlanetCCRMA] virmidi driver for alsa

[Fernando Pablo Lopez-Lezcano]

> in alsa.  I have successfully routed audio about the system using jack but 
> when it comes to midi I don't seem to have the virtual midi port installed.  
> My regular hardware midi ports are working. Can you tell me how I could go 
> about adding virtual midi ports to my system?  I understand that these are 
> part of the alsa drivers.  Can I add more than one?

I have not used virtual midi ports myself but I just got an email today
from Pedro Lopez-Cabanillas where he tells me he is using them (he uses
them to be able to access subdevices in multiport midi interfaces from
the oss emulation layer, something that you cannot do otherwise). 

It would seem it is easy to get things going:

- add the snd-virmidi to your /etc/modules.conf file

This is a smaller version of the file Pedro sent me, obviously you have
to change it to match your current configuration:

alias char-major-14 soundcore
alias char-major-116 snd
alias snd-card-0 snd-ens1371
alias snd-card-1 snd-virmidi
options snd snd_cards_limit=2
options snd-ens1371 snd_index=0
options snd-virmidi snd_index=1
alias sound-slot-0 snd-card-0
alias sound-slot-1 snd-card-1
alias sound-service-0-0 snd-mixer-oss
alias sound-service-0-1 snd-seq-oss
alias sound-service-0-3 snd-pcm-oss
alias sound-service-0-8 snd-seq-oss
alias sound-service-0-12 snd-pcm-oss

- after that do a "/bin/depmod -a"
- you should be able to load the module by doing a "/sbin/modprobe
  snd-virmidi"
- you should see the ports in "cat /proc/asound/seq/clients"
- you can connect the ports using aconnect, see "man aconnect" for
details. 

> Also I haven't had any luck building ardour.  From the latest CVS sources I 
> get an error building the file tempodisplay.cc  I know it's outside the 
> scope of this list but has anyone else had similar problems?

I had not built it in a long time, I just tried with a fresh cvs
download and it compiled fine. Maybe it was a temporary incomplete cvs
commit? I'm not having luck running it, when creating some diskstreams I
get a "Fatal Error: register audio ports called before engine was
started"...

-- Fernando