[linrad] Debian

[w3sz <w3sz@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

With the help of Ramiro and Patrick and Zaba's recent 'HOW-TO's and with  
Zaba's giving me some advice on OSS's FTP address, I was today able to get  
Linrad running under Debian with kernel 2.6.8-2-386.  THANKS GUYS for the  
helpful advice and 'cheat-sheets'!!
My first impressions are:

1.  Linrad seems to work as well under Debian as it did under Fedora Core  
3.
2.  I have NOT been able to get XWINDOWS working under Debian [even with  
the VESA driver], and while that doesn't matter for Linrad, it makes doing  
everything else with Linux much more difficult.   It is like turning the  
clock back 25 years to the DOS and CPM days...not pretty.   Doing the  
dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xfree86 thing didn't help with my hardware [Intel  
Extreme Graphics 2].  X Windows still fails to start with Debian.  It  
worked 'right out of the box' with FC3.

I had some additional issues that arose in getting Debian and Linrad to  
play nice with each other:
1.  I had the same trouble with svgalib in Debian that I had with Fedora  
core 3, presumably due to the 2.6.x kernels.  Compiling svgalib 1.9.20  
wrote the svga* devices to /dev, but these disappeared on rebooting as  
they weren't saved.  So I had to do a cp -a /dev/svga* /etc/udev/devices  
before rebooting.  To do thisI had to first create the directory  
/etc/udev/devices as it didn't exist.  With Debian, linux doesn't  
automatically put these devices back into /dev on rebooting, so one then  
needs to do a cp -a /etc/udev/devices/svga* /dev/ when rebooting.
2.  My Delta 44 and other soundcards would NOT work with the alsa-oss  
sound under Debian.  I had to ftp oss3992c-linux-x86-v26.tar.gz from  
www.se.opensound.com .  The file is in the directory /pub/oss/linux.  You  
need to log on as anonymous.  For Debian I needed the nonregparm version,  
which is what I listed here.  FC3 required the other one [regparm].
3.  OSS would not install because of the sound system already in place,  
and although oss-install tried to remove the sound system, it failed.  I  
had to remove the 'snd' file from the appropriate directory and reboot.   
Then sound couldn't start on reboot, and then OSS would install OK.  OSS  
gave some error messages on install, but it still works OK.
4.  I had 19 sound devices once oss installed, and the ?logical? choices  
in Linrad produced no properly working results.  So I ran osstest and it  
showed me the /dsp numbers of each device as it ran.  It turned out that I  
had to use /dsp6 for the Delta 44, and /dsp1 for the Intel CH5.  When  
running ossmix to set envy24.rate to 96000, the Delta44 was d3.  All of  
this will vary for your setup.
5.  Just in case someone just tuned in:  the 'modprobe svgalib_helper'  
thing is still necessary.  So is adding /dev/input/mice to the  
/etc/vga/libvga.config file.


SO, if I can get XWINDOWS working with Debian, I might make it my main  
installation.  Otherwise, it is just too much of a headache to use for  
everything other than Linrad without XWINDOWS.  Since I never had FC3 lock  
up when running Linrad for 24 hours or so like it did for Leif, there is  
really no motivation for me to switch, other to be able to say I did it,  
and to stay compatible with those who are running Linrad and Debian.  My  
Debian vs FC3 install time comparison must now be something like 30 hours  
for Debian vs 30 minutes for FC3.  FC3 works perfectly for me.  Debian  
still doesn't have XWINDOWS.  Hmmm...  ;)
Hope the above helps!

73,

Roger
W3SZ









--
Roger Rehr
W3SZ
http://www.nitehawk.com/w3sz

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