[SC.LUG] sounds funny

[Dr A V Le Blanc]

On Fri, 14 May 2004 at 15:42:37 +0100, Simeon Farrington
<swfarrington at beeb.net> wrote:
> Well, after a break of almost a year and a half, I've finally got around 
> to reinstalling Debian (Sarge). Admittedly the break was due to lack of 
> time and finally a good faff over which distro to try out. Anyway, the 
> net install went very well (except for a partitioning error where I 
> accidently made the extended partition too small and now am unable to 
> access a large amount of disk without reformatting - if anyone can 
> explain an easier way of fixing this it would be appreciated as I don't 
> want to have to reinstall!)

If you used ext2/ext3 file systems, GNU parted does handle resizing
them, as well as moving them, shifting space into an extended
partition, and so on.  It is awkward to use, but it does, in my
experience, work quite reliably.

> Also if there is a way around the partitioning error that would be 
> appreciated too :) The mistake I made was thinking that having created a 
> number of partitions (primary and logical) I could go back and partition 
> the rest of the disk when I knew what I wanted. It seems that I can't!!!

Parted certainly does allow you to move adjacent space into the
extended partition.  The ability to resize file systems in place and
to move them is nice, but sometimes it means you need to do multiple
operations.  So, for example, to shift a 10g partition here to a 12g
one there, you need to move in one operation, then resize in another.
And of course you will need to update all your fstab, grub.conf or
lilo.conf, etc, files manually.  Parted is at gnu mirrors in
/pub/gnu/parted (or the equivalent) and comes with a bootable floppy
image which contains a help file and a pager program.  But do read
the online documentation first; see, for example,

   http://www.mcc.ac.uk/Documentation/gnu/Manuals/parted-1.6.1/

where you'll find three html formats, as well as PostScript, ASCII
text, and other formats.

> Doesn't appear to like my PS/2 mouse, but 
> plugging it into a USB port and no questions are asked!!

If you mean in X, sarge does seem to configure PS/2 mice as 'auto' or
'generic' PS/2; something similar happens with gpm, if you use that.
I find two-button PS/2 mice normally need simple PS/2 as the type,
while three-button or wheelmice need ImPS/2 or one of the others.
The full list of types for PS/2 mice in X in sarge is this:

     PS/2
     GenericPS/2
     ImPS/2
     ExplorerPS/2
     ThinkingMousePS/2
     MouseManPlusPS/2
     GlidePointPS/2
     NetMousePS/2
     NetScrollPS/2

You might find there is a lot of difference between these in practice,
so do try to change the mouse type in your /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 file.

> Anyway, getting to today's question. My Audigy is picked up according to 
> dmesg:
...
> and it appears under /proc:gandalf:~# cat /proc/interrupts
...
>  19:          0   IO-APIC-level  Audigy
...
> But I can't get it to play :( Running alsamixer gives an error:
> 
> gandalf:~# alsamixer
>  
> alsamixer: function snd_ctl_open failed for default: No such device
> 
> Can anyone tell me what I've missed so I can get some sound please?! 

You can try running sndconfig, though I find it segfaults a lot on
Sarge machines.  Sound problems are a bit difficult to diagnose
remotely!  If you try Knoppix and it works, you might just copy
the two sndconfig files /etc/modutils/sndconfig and whatever
the other one is (different names for each sound card) to your
hard drive.

     -- Owen
     LeBlanc at mcc.ac.uk