How to install the sound card driver in Linux

If your sound card is supported by the current Linux, congratulations! You have bought a sound card for Linux. During Linux installation, the system will prompt you to select the sound card type. Select your sound card type from the sound card list. After testing, if you hear the voice of Linux founder Linus, it means that the sound card has been correctly configured. After Linux is started, you can make a speech.

If the ISA Sound card is not listed in the Sound card list, you can select Sound Blaster Compatible, and then select IRQ, DMA, and IO equivalent. To view the sound card supported by Linux, you can view the/usr/src/linux/sound documentation.

If the sound card cannot be correctly configured during the installation process, it indicates that your sound card has not been supported. You can use either of the following methods: first, reinstall the new kernel, generally, the new kernel supports many sound cards. For example, there are many types of sound cards supported by version 2.3.34, such as the series sound cards of Creative and Ciruss Logical semicondu423x/

461x. The second is to install a new driver. There are two options: Install the OpenSound driver of 4 Front Technology companies, and the alsaDriver developed by ALSA.

Before installation, you must have the modules tool and the core support for modules.

I. Introduction to OpenSound

1. Development History

OpenSound was developed by Hannu Savolainen and he was one of the first programmers to develop the Linux core sound card driver. Hannu then continued to develop OpenSound System, A commercial audio driver that is sold by 4 Front Technologies and supports multiple Unix systems. RedHat later funded Alan Cox, the second character in kernel development, to enhance core sound drivers and make them fully modularized. These modified drivers are used by RedHat in their 5.0-5.2 release kits. Currently, these changes have been integrated from version 2.0 into the core of the standard.

Alan Cox is now the maintainer of the standard core sound driver. Now Hannu will still add some program code separated by the commercial version at intervals. When you compile your new kernel, the oss/free driver shown in the Sound option is.

2. Advantages

The commercial version of The OpenSound System driver (developed by 4 Front Technologies) is relatively easy to set and supports many sound cards, especially new sound cards. It is compatible with applications written by standard core drivers.

3. Disadvantages

You need to purchase the trial version for $20 but won't get the source code. You can download it before deciding whether to buy it.

4. Installation Method

(1) Get the driver that suits your kernel (2.2.14 is included in the fourth issue of InfoCD in China Computer News ), decompress the tar-zxvf file name to any directory.

(2) Execute./oss-install in this directory. In the displayed copyright dialog box, select "accept", then the "release notes" dialog box appears, and select "accept ". Press enter to automatically test the new kernel and configure the sound card. If the unzipped file does not detect your sound card or the result is incorrect, you can manually select your sound card from the sound card list.

(3) Each time the sound card driver is loaded, you need to install soundon in the oss directory and execute soundoff when you exit.

II. Introduction to ALSA

1. Development History

Jaroslav Kysela and others wrote optional drivers for the Gravis UltraSound sound card. The plan was later renamed to Advanced Linux Sound Architecture (ALSA), which gave rise to a Sound driver that they thought was more common and could be used to replace the core.

The ALSA driver supports many common sound cards and is fully duplex and fully modular. It is compatible with the sound architecture in the existing core. You can learn more about alsa on the http://www.alsa-project.org website.

2. Installation Method

(1) Get the latest driver from the website. Currently, the latest driver is 0.5.7. The file name is alsa-drive-0.5.7.tar.bz2, and the file size is KB. Put the file in the root directory. Note that it is not compressed by gzip, but compressed by bzip2 (the latest kernel also uses it). Therefore, the decompression method is as follows:

Bzip2-d alsa-drive-0.5.7.tar.bz2

Tar-xvf alsa-drive-0.5.7.tar

This creates a alsa-drive-0.5.7 directory under the root directory.

(2) Go To The alsa-drive-0.5.7 directory and execute./configure for configuration.

(3) execute make install for compilation and installation. Drivers of various sound cards are compiled into modules and copied to/lib/modules, therefore, you can delete this directory after installing the sound card driver.

(4) Execute./snddevices to create a new audio device file.

(5) To guarantee the compatibility with the oss/free driver, we must also modify/etc/modules. conf (the old version is/etc/conf. the Code is as follows (taking Intel810 as an example ):

# ALSA native device support

Alias char-major-116 snd

Note: The Sound Card is 116 characters

Options snd snd_major = 116 snd_cards_limit = 1

Alias snd-card-0 snd-card-intel8x0

Note: To set the sound card, see the name of the sound card device in the/modules directory.

Options snd-card-intel8x0 snd_index = 0 snd_id = "intel810"

Note: There is only one sound card, so snd_index = 0 and snd_id content are self-set, with no more than 15 characters

# OSS/Free setup

Alias char-major-14 soundcore

Alias sound-slot-0 snd-card-0

Alias sound-service-0-0 snd-mixer-oss

Alias sound-service-0-1 snd-seq-oss

Alias sound-service-0-3 snd-pcm-oss

Alias sound-service-0-8 snd-seq-oss

Alias sound-service-0-12 snd-pcm-oss

It looks very complicated, in fact, the above program only needs to replace the fourth, five lines of snd-card-intel8x0 with your sound card device name, generally snd-card-product name. You can also paste a part of the install document in this directory before modifying it.

(6) Execute The modprobe snd-intel8x0 to load the sound card driver, replace the snd-intel8x0 with snd-your product name, you can refer to the sound card device name under the/modules directory.

　

(7) Open the mix in the X Window and adjust the volume to use the x11amp to play an MP3 player. If everything is normal, you can hear the music.

(8) You can add the "modprobe snd-intel8x0" in/etc/rc. d/rc. locale so that automatic loading is started each time.

In addition, the current ALSA drivers support a few sound cards, mainly including the ESS 1978/1938 series and Creative SoundBlaster live! Series, CMI 8330/8338/8738 series, etc. For details about the supported sound card list, refer to the decompressed doc/soundcar file.

A well-known sound card manufacturer generally lists the Linux-based sound card drivers on its home page. For example, the Creative company listed its sound card drivers on the home page (which can be found on the fourth issue of InfoCD ), the Aureal series 8810/8820/8830 can also be found on the manufacturer's homepage. If the problem persists, go to the home page of your sound card chip manufacturer.

During the installation process, it is best to check the instruction file first and then install it again. This saves a lot of trouble and allows you to see more instructions in case of faults. In addition, you must be familiar with modprobe, lsmod, insmod, and other commands, the above method has been used to install the sound card driver on Aureal 6.1, CMI 6.0, Intel 8820, VIA 686A, and Crystal semiconducs 8830 on RedHat 810 and TurboLinux 4236.


Author: piaoliuxiong