[cooker-amd64] Re: using and compiling rpms not specifically put together for amd64

[Duncan]

Arie Folger posted <200401280828.03390.afolger@aishdas.org>, excerpted
below,  on Wed, 28 Jan 2004 08:28:03 +0100:

> I like it. Perhaps, once I get that box's internet connection to work
> [,] I'll start updating from cooker.

Careful.  It can be addicting!  <g>   I don't update as regularly as some
do, but often enough that even the 2-3x yearly release schedule of
Mandrake releases seems about as old and slow as the two-year MSWormOS
proprietary cycle.  Other than the direct financial effect, I'm sure
that's one reason MS is trying to get folks switched over to a
subscription based update, and off of the two-year but BIG step thing.  Of
course, with what THEY charge, it's no WONDER folks are protesting it.   I
know it sounded ludicrous to me, back on MSWormOS 9x, as well. 

How things change.  Now I'm requesting exactly that, a continuously
upgraded annual subscription model, internet distributed, that I can
effectively support Mdk with.  Of course, there's a BIG difference between
the combined MS and proprietary-apps price of hundreds of dollars a year
(per seat) to keep up to date on platform and apps, and the comparable
apps/platform unified distribution price we'd be talking about with Mdk,
especially given that what I'm paying for their is not the apps
specifically, which are available free (both "gratis",as in O'Doulls (I
don't do beer/alcohol) and "libre", as in speech and computer code), but
the service of having them all combined into a single distribution,
available from a single distributor, which is worth paying for. to many of
us.

> I installed the -27 kernel and that fixed some bugs, but one still
> bothers me a lot: when I play a cd, it routes the sound not to the sound
> card, but to the headphone jack of the cd player/dvd writer (a NEC),
> even when no headphones are plugged in. (IOW, in the latter case I hear
> nothing). Yet, if I want, I can rip a ogg of each song and play that on
> the sound card. Is there an easy way to fix that? I couldn't find
> anything obvious and tried to rtfm, but found nothing.

That reminds me of my audio problem, different, but keying on headphones,
still.  For some reason, here, the "master" volume doesn't do anything. 
Instead, it's the "headphone" volume, in ALSA, that acts as master.  I'm
not sure whether it's something having to do with the mainboard, or
whether it's the alsa driver for the built-in sound, or a simple config
file somewhere that I could switch the assignments in if I knew where to
look, or a mixture of the preceding factors. However, it's certainly
frustrating.  It's on my todo list to investigate, at some point, but
realistically speaking, I'm likely to get a new sound card b4 I get it
done, one that will do multi-channel digital out to a new 4 plus channel
stereo amp I intend to get at some point.  Meanwhile, now that I know the
headphone slider serves as master (tho it was frustrating not having
audio until I figured that out), it works OK with my current setup, hooked
into my current left/right only home stereo, thus, the reason I'll
probably not do anything further on it until I upgrade out of the problem.

(It's a different issue than yours, because it doesn't just affect CDs,
but anything played thru the computer audio, including the pcm output that
mp3s play thru, which you specifically said was unaffected in your case.)

As for kernels, you can probably guess what I'm doing there.  I just got
the kernel from the kernel-2.6.2-0.rc1.1mdk srpm recompiled for amd64-smp
successfully, and just booted to it about an hour ago.  

So far, so good, stability-wise, but I've still got some misc. kinks to
work out, and possible bug reports to make. However, more on that in a new
thread, starting with my next post, since a 2.6 kernel thread would be
better suited to that discussion than this thread.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little
temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." --
Benjamin Franklin