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May 21, 2008

Hans Fugal
no nic
The Fugue :
» Sound Card Indices

I have two soundcards in my desktop: the built-in soundcard which uses the snd-via82xx module, and the nice soundcard which uses the snd-cs46xx module. Naturally, the speakers are plugged into the nice card.

When I installed Ubuntu 8.04 from scratch, the VIA card started showing up as the first card, and therefore the default card. (You can tell by looking at /proc/asound/cards.) I created the following /etc/asound.conf to remedy that problem:

pcm.!default {
  type hw
  card CS46xx
}
ctl.!default {
  type hw
  card CS46xx
}

Ok, so now all programs using ALSA's default device automatically go to the right soundcard. But apparently using the default device is too much to ask of some software, which apparently hardcodes hw:0 or (even nuttier) hw:0,0.

So what I really wanted was to fix the order problem, so that the VIA card doesn't steal index 0. On Ubuntu at least, the fix is:

echo 'options snd-via82xx index=2' >> /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base

Now my /proc/asound/cards always looks like this:

0 [CS46xx         ]: CS46xx - Sound Fusion CS46xx
                     Sound Fusion CS46xx at 0xfb122000/0xfb000000, irq 20
1 [UART           ]: MPU-401 UART - MPU-401 UART
                     MPU-401 UART at 0x330, irq 10
2 [V8237          ]: VIA8237 - VIA 8237
                     VIA 8237 with ALC655 at 0xec00, irq 21

by Hans Fugal at 6:18 AM under debian , kernel , linux , module , ubuntu
September 10, 2007

Von Fugal
no nic
ATOM von Fugal
» Network Manager

As I just said, I attended fozzmoo’s presentation at the UTOSC. I spent some time trying to get Network Manager installed and working on my laptop before hand, and about half way through the talk. Both fozzmoo and others in the room were very helpful in getting it up and running. Now it is and I must say, it’s pretty slick.

That said, I will tell you that Network Manager isn’t the end-all be-all of your networking experience. It is for a very specific niche, which is for ‘on the go networking’. If you don’t try to shoehorn it outside of this, you’ll have a great time with it.

I mention this because in the presentation several people asked about static ip’s and such. NM doesn’t do these well, nor do I think it really should. I admit though it irked me at first. My next tidbit of helpful information is what actually brought me around to this understanding of what NM is.

At the presentation there was some discussion about ubuntu and network manager. By myself, as you can imagine, as well as others. I poked around on my laptop, and figured out that an interface would only be managed in network manager if it was not in /etc/network/interfaces as well as finding that the normal ubuntu network configuration tool made changes to this file. This concerned me and I made it known to others, saying if you want NM you should go in and disable the interface in ubuntu’s config. That seemed kludgy to me.

Well, when I got home I fiddled with it some more. There I found that you don’t actually have to disable the interface, ubuntu’s config tool actually has an option in the interface properties to put an interface in ‘roaming’ mode. “Cool,” I thought. But more than cool, this is what made me realize the true nature of NM. So I configured some profiles in the network config as such:

  • Home: wireless in roaming, wired static on my home network (my laptop serves as gateway through the wireless)
  • Caradhras: wireless configured to caradhras (my router) if I’m ever again lucky enough to have my router serve as gateway.
  • Other: like it sounds, anywhere I don’t have a specific configuration. This one puts both interfaces in roaming mode.

It’s pretty sweet how they work together once you figure out the respective roles.

0 comments

by Von Fugal at 8:18 PM under debian , linux , network , troubleshooting , ubuntu , utosc
January 19, 2007

Byron Clark
byronc
byronc bits
» Happy Iceweasel Day

In honor of Iceweasel landing in Debian etch it’s time for a list of the iceweasel/firefox extensions that I just can’t live without.

  1. Adblock Plus. That one should be pretty obvious.
  2. Download Statusbar. The download manager window gets on my nerves, especially because ion3 and non-transient windows like the download manager become full frame windows. Still, I like to see progress on my downloads.
  3. Fission. Shows page loading progress in the address bar, somewhat like Safari. For those of us stuck on 1024×768 (or smaller) monitors it means some saved screen real estate because the status bar can go away.

by byron at 4:14 AM under debian , linux (Comments)