Standard sbc and pcm support in GENERIC kernel?

David Raistrick drais at atlasta.net
Fri Mar 5 08:44:47 PST 2004


On Thu, 4 Mar 2004, Brandon D. Valentine wrote:


> If they'd read pcm(4) they'd know how to get sound support up and
> running without recompiling their kernel.  Is there something wrong with
> requiring that a new user bother to read the documentation?

pcm(4) only explains the technical details, as well as partially covering
the reboot-to-make-it-work scenario.  It doesn't cover the kdlload
scenario to bring sound online without rebooting.

If pcm(4) or the handbook, or something, would give a more end-user
oriented (for those who are new to 5.x or new to freebsd entirely)
approach, this would be very helpful.


pcm(4) also provides no detail on how to determine what "foo" should be
for your soundcard.

           snd_foo_load      (``NO'') If set to ``YES'', load driver for
                             card/chipset foo.


For example, I have an ALC650 soundcard in my XPC.  Where do I look to
find out what snd_foo_load I need to enable the sound?  I've still not
found this information.

I use snd_driver_load="YES" which loads /all/ of the pcm drivers, but I
cannot tell from kldstat which driver I'm actually using, so I could avoid
loading the others.

Providing detail on how to kldload "snd_driver_load" or "snd_foo_load"
would be nice, so users can test this without rebooting their systems.


kldload snd_driver

is of course the correct way to do it.  FWIW, kldunload snd_driver does
/not/ unload all of the modules that kldload snd_driver loads.


All of this of course assumes that the modules are even built and
installed in /boot/kernel/ which may or may not be the case (in my
experiance) with a fresh installation.  You may need to make install
these...


~shrug~

...david
---
david raistrick
drais at atlasta.net		http://www.expita.com/nomime.html



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