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AudioThe default Debian Woody install does not contain a driver for the audio chip in the Pundit so I had to manually install one. There are a couple of popular sound driver architectures for Linux, namely the Open Sound System (OSS) and the Advanced Linux Sound Architecture (ALSA). I had heard good things about ALSA and that it supports the sound chip used in the Pundit so I decided to give it a try.
The audio chip in the Pundit is identified as an SiS 735. The ALSA site has a couple of drivers listed for this chip, one marked as SiS 7012, the other as 7018. It would seem that the SiS chips are based on some other third party chips and perhaps they changed between revisions of the SiS 735 or something? Anyway, the right one for the audio chip in the Pundit seems to be the one listed for the SiS 7012 variant. The SiS 7012 page on the ALSA website contains full instructions but the following instructions detail what I did to install the drivers. Firstly I downloaded the ALSA source files that I needed into a new directory that I had created ~matt/build/alsa:
Next I unpacked each of the files:
Now I built the ALSA driver:
I then switched to the root user to install the driver and create the devices:
Next I switched back to my 'matt' user and built the ALSA libs package:
Again, I switched to the root user to install the libs:
Next up was the ALSA utils package. I switched back to my 'matt' user once again and built the utils:
Once again, I switched to the root user to install the utils:
That's about it for installing the audio drivers themselves, but some configuration needs to be done before they can be used.
The first step of configuration is to install a Debian ALSA package which adds init scripts to deal with starting up and shutting down the audio, setting up volume levels on boot up etc. I downloaded the following Debian package:
I installed the package as the root user, accepting the defaults when prompted:
The next thing I configured was the audio module loading parameters. I created a file (as root) called /etc/modutils/alsa containing the following lines:
Once I'd created that file I ran the following command as root in order to apply the new settings:
In order that my 'matt' user would have permission to use the audio devices I altered my /etc/group file to add my 'matt' user to the 'audio' group. I changed the line in the /etc/group file which read:
to:
With that done, I rebooted so that the new audio drivers would be loaded. It seems pertinent at this point to talk a little about window managers. Different window managers have different ways of dealing with sound and so far I have some of these working but not others. I suggest that after rebooting you should login to a KDE session as that seems to work fine. I did also try logging into a Gnome session, however the sound didn't seem to work properly in there. I was able to get some sound apps in Gnome working by first killing the 'esd' process, but I would recommend using KDE. On a later page in these instructions I will detail installing a different window manager altogether that I decided to use for running mythtv. Normally during a KDE login there is a welcome sound played, but the first time I did this there was no sound at all. This is due to the fact that the mixer levels need to be set - all the channels are set to mute by default. After logging into KDE as my 'matt' user I started up a shell window and used the command:
Running alsamixer brings up a curses based app which lets you set the levels of the various mixer channels. You can use left and right arrow keys to select different channels. The 'Master' channel is selected by default. I pressed the 'm' key to un-mute the channel and then used the up arrow key to set the volume level to 65. I repeated this process on the 'Master M' and 'PCM' sound channels. Once this was complete I hit Esc to quit the alsamixer program. I logged out of KDE and then back in again. This time during the KDE startup sequence I heard the welcome sound clip.
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