On Mon, Apr 22, 2024 at 5:03 AM Charlie Gibbs <cgi...@surfnaked.ca> wrote:
> I should probably be posting this to the Steam forums, but > most of the denizens there are Windows people so I might be > better off letting you Debian gurus have a go at it first. > > TL;DR: Copying an existing /home into a fresh Debian installation > causes audio in Steam games to glitch - but all other sound is OK. > > Full description: > > I have a machine in the living room that stores MP3s and videos > and serves them to other machines on our network as well as playing > them locally on our TV's big screen. I also play a few Steam games > (e.g. Portal) on it. It's a 2007-vintage machine, but it has 8GB > of RAM and enough CPU power to do the job, and runs the latest > version of Bookworm. > > Recently I decided to upgrade its storage capacity, and replaced > its 500GB hard drive (which was pretty large at the time I bought > it) with a 4TB drive. I did an install from scratch using a > network install CD, then copied my /home partition (using rsync) > from the old drive. Everything works great with one exception: > when I fire up Portal the sound gets glitches about once a second. > This only happens with Steam games; I can play MP3s and videos > with mpv and the sound is perfect, as it is when watching YouTube > videos. If I swap the old drive back in everything is fine. > > Obviously my Steam programs and configuration files are in my > home directory, since the updated system comes up icons and all > without re-installing Steam, and can find everything it needs to > run the games. But perhaps there are a few files somewhere else > (/usr?) containing information critical to audio for Steam. > > Any ideas? > What are the old and new hard drive model numbers and specs? If the old hard drive was spinning rust, it is acceptable to replace it with a solid state drive. I did it several times in the past. But nowadays a new machine usually (always?) comes with a SSD, so you usually don't need to upgrade for performance reasons.
