[PlanetCCRMA] Another Newbie Q

[Fernando Pablo Lopez-Lezcano]

> Out of curiosity I then ran Synaptic. I searched for, and successfully 
> downloaded Rosegarden, and while doing this, got the new kernel too. This 
> made the process really easy.

Hmmm, I had another user do that recently. I have to put a warning
there, at that point you are not yet ready to run rosegarden, you have
to go through the kernel and alsa installation process (which is a bit
more than just letting synaptic install the kernel alone). 

> I'm now going through the process of "Configuring the ALSA Sound Driver".
> 
> I have a few questions relating to this process:
> 
> 1. When I restarted with the new kernel, "kudzu" discoveref some "new" 
> hardware--my PCI audio card. Should I let "kudzu" configure it or should I 
> ignore this?

You could let it "configure" it, it just will configure the OSS driver,
not alsa. Alsaconf will undo that configuration (and put the alsa
configuration information in /etc/modules.conf). 

> 2. I ran the "alsaconf" script, which I think worked successfully. However, 
> I still haven't been able to make the card produce any sound. 

Did you start the alsa driver? Was it successfull in starting? (running
/etc/rc.d/init.d/alsasound start). Did you configure the mixer?
(channels in alsa are by default muted and volume is zero). 

> I assume this 
> is because the OSS drivers are still loading. What I'm not clear about is 
> the following:
> 
> "Don't forget to disable any lines in /etc/modules.conf that correspond to 
> the oss sound driver kernel modules".

The latest alsaconf does that for you. If alsaconf configured alsa
successfully you should have the proper configuration in
/etc/modules.conf. 

> How do I know which lines these are? Are they the ones that end with "oss"?

Not necessarily, again, if alsaconf run the configuration should be
fine. 

> 3. I'm pretty sure that my soundcard driver is installed however, as 
> mentioned in the guide, I need to un-mute and turn up the volume on it 
> (step 5). Where do I find "alsamixer" and "envy24control"? Do I have to 
> install these programs separately?

If you installed planetccrma-core (as outlined in the guide) those
should be already there, if not you should install planetccrma-core. 

-- Fernando