[PlanetCCRMA] Midiman Oxygen8 on Fedora 9

[Peter Howard]

On Sun, 2008-07-06 at 07:44 -0400, Ebrahim Mayat wrote:
> On Sun, 2008-07-06 at 12:14 +1000, Peter Howard wrote: 
> > My old laptop died and when setting up my new (to me) one I decided to
> > go straight to Fedora 9.  Which has been good up to the point I decided
> > to connect my Oxygen8 keyboard.  I discovered to my joy that
> > midisport-firmware is now packaged for Fedora so installed it.
> > Interestingly the current version (1.2) doesn't mention the need to
> > provide the actual firmware as the 0.X version did.  Anyway I plug in
> > the keyboard and it appears to initialise.  But it doesn't appear
> > anywhere.   My normal way of connecting it is via the qjackctl "connect"
> > window.  But it isn't there.  

[snip]

> Yes, I also have a similar problem with my MIDI interface which I posted to this list previously :
> 

Thanks.  This wasn't my problem (read below), but your details got me
out of my "It's stopped working!!!! I DON'T want to have to think about
this!!!!" mindset :-)

> > OTOH, my MIDI is not fully functional. Virtual onboard MIDI works if
> > I
> > route MIDI events between applications e.g. vkeybd --> softsynth or 
> > aplaymidi ---> kmidimon. There was also no problem in rendering a MIDI
> > file
> > 
> > $ aplaymidi -p 129 MIDIFile.mid (129 = qsynth)
> > 
> > BUT...I am unable to trigger MIDI events from my external MIDI
> > controller.
> > 
> > I suspect that this is because the driver for my FastLane MIDI
> > interface
> > is now broken on F9. (FastLane works on OS X so it's not the hardware
> > device.) While this problem has been documented before, this MIDI
> > interface has been working flawlessly on FC6, FC7 and FC8. So,
> > something
> > has indeed changed. 
> > 
> > Long story short...the hardware MIDI device is recognized in F9 when
> > checked using "amidi -l", "dmesg" and "cat /proc/asound/devices".
> > Also see <http://hg.alsa-project.org/alsa-kernel/log?rev=motu>
> > 
> > The "Messages" window of qsynth, however, returns the following
> > error:
> > fluidsynth: warning: Could not connect to any physical jack ports;
> > fluidsynth is unconnected
> > 
> > 
> > All the relevent modules are loaded:
> > 
> > # lsmod | grep snd
> > 

[snip]

> > Finally "amidi --dump" does give the following error message:
> > # amidi --dump
> > ALSA lib rawmidi_hw.c:233:(snd_rawmidi_hw_open) open /dev/snd/midiC0D0
> > failed: No such file or directory
> > cannot open port "default": No such file or directory
> 

The fact modules _were_ missing in my list, and the fact that "amidi -l"
crashed, let alone "amidi --dump" confirmed to me that the keyboard
_wasn't_ being initialised.  So then I did what I should have done at
the start - cross check the Vendor/ProdID values given out
of /proc/bus/usb/devices against what was
in /etc/udev/rules.d/81-midisport.rules (as provided by the
midisport-firmware RPM).  And, lo and behold, the Oxygen8 values weren't
in there.

'DOH!

pulling the values out of ye olde midisport_firmware 0.2 (I've confirmed
they're also in the 1.2 you pull directly from sourceforge) and manually
adding them to the rules file solved my problem.  

So from that I can answer my own questions (plus some more)
      * The old hotplug-based midisport-firmare releases (0.x) don't
        work at all with Fedora 9
      * It appears that you no longer need to separately supply the
        firmware blobs - they're there in the 1.X series of
        midisport-firmware.
      * The rules file included in the midisport-firmware RPM for F9
        lacks most of the devices listed in the upstream package.



> As a short-term (maybe long-term) fix I re-installed the old
> 2.6.22.10-1.rt9.1.fc8rt kernel (with which external MIDI triggering has
> worked flawlessly and still works).

Once it's configured properly, the keyboard is working fine with the
2.6.24.7-1.rt3.2.fc9.ccrmart kernel.  Don't know if it's relevant to you
or not, but if you were failing on earlier kernels it's worth a try
(note: as of right now all I've done is play the keyboard - no fiddling
with wheels or controllers - just notes).

Anyway thanks again for getting me thinking in the right direction.

PJH