Hi! > So... in dsp, if I wanted to record sound, I did > > cat /dev/dsp > /tmp/foo; cat /tmp/foo > /dev/dsp > > If that worked, I had usable sound system, and if it broke, I knew it > is kernel fault. > > With alsa it is > > download & install alsalib > download & install alsautils > create 1007 nodes in /dev > launch alsamixer, figure out what to do from inadequate descriptions > launch arecord, try to guess some suitable options > launch aplay, try to guess some options > > ...if it does not work, it may be a kernel problem or userspace > problem; I'm left with debugging both. That makes alsa pretty much > untestable.
(Just for the record, I should note that networking is misdesigned in similar way; that's why we have eth0 instead of /dev/eth0, and need special tools to rename network interface. But this mistake dates to BSD days or something, so we got used to it... and at least you do not need to keep libnetwork up to date to keep your net devices working. So networking provides _ugly_ hardware abstraction, but it provides it). Pavel -- (english) http://www.livejournal.com/~pavelmachek (cesky, pictures) http://atrey.karlin.mff.cuni.cz/~pavel/picture/horses/blog.html - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/