sound card and freebsd v7.0

[Ian Smith]

On Sat, 27 Sep 2008 09:44:07 +1000 jonathan michaels <jlm at caamora.com.au> wrote:
 > On Fri, Sep 26, 2008 at 08:52:42AM +0200, Bernt Hansson wrote:
 > > jonathan michaels:
 > > 
 > > > 
 > > > Sep 26 13:26:46 hostid kernel: pci0: <bridge> at device 4.3 (no driver attached)
 > > > Sep 26 13:26:46 hostid kernel: csa0: <CS4280/CS4614/CS4622/CS4624/CS4630> mem 0xf4100000-0xf4100fff,0xf4000000-0xf40fffff irq 10 at device 6.0 on pci0
 > > > Sep 26 13:26:46 hostid kernel: csa: card is Unknown/invalid SSID (CS4614)
 > > > Sep 26 13:26:46 hostid kernel: csa0: [GIANT-LOCKED]
 > > > Sep 26 13:26:46 hostid kernel: csa0: [ITHREAD]
 > > > Sep 26 13:26:46 hostid kernel: pcm0: <CS461x PCM Audio> on csa0
 > > > Sep 26 13:26:46 hostid kernel: pcm0: <Cirrus Logic CS4297 AC97 Codec>
 > > > Sep 26 13:26:46 hostid kernel: pcm0: [GIANT-LOCKED]
 > > > Sep 26 13:26:46 hostid kernel: pcm0: [ITHREAD]
 > > > 
 > > > i enabled all teh sound drivers on boot and this is what is in teh
 > > > /var/log/messages said aboutt he sound card.
 > > 
 > > How did you enable the sounddriver?
 > 
 > after the initial install, i created/editied a /boot/loader.conf.local
 > file to enable all teh sound drivers to see which one came up as being
 > the one .. grin.
[..]
 > > What is the output of cat /dev/sndstat?
 > 
 > FreeBSD Audio Driver (newpcm: 32bit 2007061600/i386)
 > Installed devices:
 > pcm0: <CS461x PCM Audio> at irq 10 kld snd_csa [GIANT] (1p:1v/1r:1v channels duplex default)

Right, so you should only need snd_csa_load="YES" in /boot/loader.conf, 
assuming you have a GENERIC kernel that already has 'device sound'; if 
not, you may also need sound_load="YES".

If you set 'sysctl hw.snd.verbose=2' manually or have 'hw.snd.verbose=2' 
in /etc/sysctl.conf, you'll get more info out of 'cat /dev/sndstat', 
which someone might need if you're still having problems with sound.

 > > > the drive is a 120 gb hitachi deskstar .. linux (several of teh most
 > > > recent distributions, ubuntu/centos/fedora sees it as a 120 gb, as
 > > > dose solaris v10/v11 but freebsd calls it a 114 gb drive
 > > 
 > > That's quite simple, freebsd calls it for what it is a 114 Gb disk.
[..]

 > i do not understand this .. i mean i do not understant how freebsd can
 > take a drive with the cylinders/heads/sectors that produces xxx million
 > sectors that muitiplied by 512 bytes producs 120 gb (real gb) solaris
 > also identifies this as a 120 gb drive as do several linux distrinutions
 > (centos and ubuntu based).

I think you're perhaps referring to what df tells you about free space? 
Remember that UFS reserves, by default, 8% of a slice for system use or 
overcommitment by root.  So a 120GB drive, all allocated to one slice, 
newfs'd, you'd expect df to show you around 110GB.  If you actually fill 
it up, from a root process, you'd see the oft-dreaded '108% capacity' :)

Assuming for example that your disk is /dev/ad0, show us the output of 
'fdisk -s ad0'.  Then, for any slice/s (X) having FreeBSD type 0xa5, 
show result of 'bsdlabel ad0sX'.  The sector maths should then work out.

 > could this be a "lba" confusion/issue between teh drive/bios/freebsd 
 > interpretation ?? it is a term i recall from earlier, when thes kinds 
 > of drives first appeared and casued significant consternations for 
 > everybody not just freebsd. it is a problems as far as i have several 
 > of thes drives to be putting into several 'server' machines where 
 > this kind of freespace 'loss' would become an issue --- hardware 
 > density, as in drivers per terabyte leading to power consumption/space
 > and heating conciderations in raid arrays (five and ten drive rack)s

>From memory, all disks over ~8GB need LBA addressing.  It's been a long 
while since the LBA vs CHS setup was an issue, which is why on modern 
disks you should always ignore sysinstall's archaic whinging about the 
geometry, and just use what's originally detected, ie leave it alone.

 > this is not a 'real' problem as 95 gb (whats left after install from a
 > 114 gb start point) is more than enough for this boxes task-load. it is
 > that i find this a bit confusing/interesting, esp given that fresbie
 > v1.1 aslo sees this as a 120 gb drive ???  just interested in fiding
 > out what is going on and if this is a pointer to future hardware
 > mis-identification --- i understand the difference between "real"
 > gigabytes and "marketing department" gigabytes

The fdisk and bsdlabel outputs will tell the true story.  If, as you 
suggested earlier, you did enter a different geometry, you might have 
lost some real space, so also show us 'fdisk ad0 | grep cylinders'

cheers, Ian