[gentoo-amd64] Re: Arts + alsa does not work anymore after a world update

[Duncan]

Etienne Imguimbert posted <756628910603160144x7e37e755v@××××××××××.com>,
excerpted below,  on Thu, 16 Mar 2006 10:44:03 +0100:

> I've got a problem with arts + alsa wich worked well until I updated my world.
> When trying to launch artsd I get this error message:
>
> etienne@a64 ~ $ artsd
> unix_connect: can't connect to server
> (unix:/tmp/ksocket-etienne/localhost-1cdb-441734e0)
> artsd: conf.c:3144: snd_config_iterator_first: Assertion `node->type
> == SND_CONFIG_TYPE_COMPOUND' failed.
> Abandon
> etienne@a64 ~

> profile: amd64 2006.0
> arts-3.5.1
> alsa-lib-1.0.11_rc3
> alsa-driver-1.0.11_rc3  (not in kernel, but installed with emerge)
> gcc (GCC) 3.4.4 (Gentoo Hardened 3.4.4-r1, ssp-3.4.4-1.0, pie-8.7
> uname -a => Linux a64 2.6.15-gentoo-r1-C10 #1 PREEMPT Mon Jan 23
> 20:11:33 CET 2006 x86_64 AMD Athlon(tm) 64 Processor 3500+
> AuthenticAMD GNU/Linux

This may or may not be related, and IDR whether it's with kernel 2.6.15 or
2.6.16(-rcX), and I run the in-kernel alsa-drivers so am not sure how this
relates to the out-of-kernel drivers, but in the kernel alsa drivers at
least, there's now an option to include the old alsa (0.9x IIRC)
compatibility layer or not.

I had to futz around a bit with arts and kde's notification configuration,
about time the kernel changed, to get it to work again.  KDE/arts 3.5.1
here too.  I'm not positive the appearance of the  kernel option had
anything to do with it, but it happened about the same time, and after
futzing around a bit, switching the ARTS sound drivers between
OSS/OSS-threaded/ALSA and restarting ARTS each time, switching
notifications between KDE-system/external (artsplay), and restarting KDE,
I got it all working again.

You may also try shutting down KDE/X and blowing away all the dcop sockets
and ksycoca stuff.  It's  probably not related, but if you are running
arts in KDE as most are, it's worth a shot, just to be sure.

ARTS has a reputation for being very finicky.  Sometimes it works,
sometimes it doesn't.  Many people never get it working and switch to ESD
or something using the external player, or do without sound notification
events in KDE altogether.  Even most of the KDE team consider it broken
and the code a hopeless and unsupportable spaghetti code jumble.  Those
familiar with it say it simply tried to do too much, too soon, without
clear modularization, and never did any of what it was supposed to do well
-- that is free of significant bugs.  The original authors left some time
ago and it hasn't had much but minimal maintenance since, as the code is
simply too jumbled and complex for anybody else to master. For those
who know how bad most KDE folks consider the state it's in, it's a wonder
they actually got it ported to work with 64-bit amd64 at all. The KDE
folks have wanted to switch off of ARTS for some time, and are doing so
for KDE-4 which has an entirely different audio framework, but decided
they had to keep it thru the rest of the KDE-3 series for backward
compatibility reasons. So... it's a bad picture in general, but the good
news is there's a light at the end of the tunnel, with KDE-4, which is
loosely scheduled for release late this year but might be early 2007 as
they really can't say yet how long it'll take to stabilize all the new
code, since only now are kdelibs-4.x starting to stabilize enough to
really begin to develop anything else on top of them.

If no one here has suggestions that get it working again, consider posting
to the gentoo-desktop list.  It's not as active, but is watched by the
Gentoo-KDE devs and a fair amount of the activity there is on that list
is KDE question related.  The forums and general gentoo-user list are
other options you may try.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman in
http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2004/12/22/rms_interview.html


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