[PlanetCCRMA] How to update the alsa driver step by step

[Nigel Henry]

On Thursday 11 October 2007 23:50, Fernando Lopez-Lezcano wrote:
> On Thu, 2007-10-11 at 23:12 +0200, Nigel Henry wrote:
> > On Thursday 11 October 2007 22:18, Fernando Lopez-Lezcano wrote:
> > > On Thu, 2007-10-11 at 20:50 +0200, Nigel Henry wrote:
> > > > I want to practice upgrading the alsa driver for my fedora
> > > > 2.6.22.9-91.fc7-i686 kernel. Currently the driver version is 1.0.14,
> > > > and I want to upgrade it to the 1.0.15rc3 version.
> > > >
> > > > The kernel running on Fedora 7 at the moment is 2.6.22.9-91.fc7-i686,
> > > > and the kernel headers are installed for it. I also installed the
> > > > kernel-devel package for this kernel, and the 1.0.15rc3 alsa driver
> > > > is unpacked, ready, and waiting in my /home/user directory.
> > > >
> > > > What do I do next ?
> > > >
> > > > Appreciate any help, as I really need to learn how to do this stuff.
> > >
> > > There's two approaches. One would be to build a compatible kernel
> > > module package that overrides the kernel modules of the stock kernel
> > > (that's what I'm doing with kmod-alsa-rt for the Planet CCRMA kernel).
> > > The second would be installing from source on top of the existing
> > > kernel modules.
> >
> > Ok. I've downloaded the source for alsa driver 1.0.15rc3, and want to
> > replace the current 1.0.14 with this later version.
>
> Make sure that you have installed the -devel package that corresponds to
> the kernel you are booting (apparently the stock fedora kernel). That
> should be "yum install kernel-devel".
>
> > On the alsa-user list it appeared to be a simple ./configure, make, su to
> > root, and make install to achieve this, but surely I need to be cd'd into
> > some directory so that the new driver is installed correctly.
>
> Well, it should not be necessary as the files _should_ be installed in
> the proper tree, which should be:
>
>   /lib/modules/`uname -r`/
>
> I think you will need to tell alsa where you kernel headers are located
> (part of the kernel-devel package).
>
> > I'm sorry if I sound a bit clueless, but I havn't upgraded kernel modules
> > before.
>
> Is there a particular reason you are doing this?

Well I've never had any problems with the alsa driver, and my soundcards 
(audigy2, and ensoniq), but I try and help folks from time to time with sound 
problems, as you've helped me when I started off using planetccrma with FC1.

Hda intel is a particular problem, with all it's variations. Some possible 
fixes are only available by upgrading the alsa driver to the latest 
development version, or one of the nightly hg snapshots. For example there 
are patches for realtek codecs included in the latest drivers, which may fix 
some laptop sound problems, that have very new mobo's.

I don't like suggesting things that I know nothing about, so if I can have 
some practice at updating the driver, I'll feel more confident about 
suggesting it others, if there's the possibility of it maybe resolving their 
problem. 

Thanks for the suggestions on the previous post.

Nigel.
> -- Fernando