Call for testers: audioemu10K

I've just posted another update to the audioemu10k package. This update completely redesigned the underlying timing and interrupt support, and as a result it should work better with Suspend/Resume (without getting engine underruns.)

I've posted a webrev as well, and would really appreciate help with codereview.

Additionally, I've fixed the mixer a bit, to the point that I'm confident that a number of devices work perfectly. But some don't. Here's my test results so far:

• CT4670 -- (Sound Blaster Live!) verified 100% functional, including 4.0 surround.
• SB0100 -- (Sound Blaster Live! 5.1) SPDIF works, 4.0 surround works, no center/lfe output in 5.1 mode. Can't figure out why. (Would love to hear advice on this one.)
• SB0400 (Audigy 2 Value) -- works perfectly. Including full 5.1 surround, SPDIF output. I've not tested the side 7.1 channels because I don't have the necessary cable to do so.
• SB0350 (Audigy 2 ZS Platinum) -- surround sound on rear jacks works fine in 5.1 (can't test 7.1). My expansion box appears to be kaput though (doesn't work in Linux either), so I need help testing this from someone else who has a working one.

Those are the only devices I have on hand to test, but the driver can in theory support many many more. If you can expand the supported test, please let me know.

Thanks!

test audioemu10k driver posted

I've posted a test package containing the "audioemu10k" driver. (x86/amd64 platforms only).

There is also a webrev with the code.

This driver supports (in theory) a large number of cards from Creative. (Devices identified in prtconf -vp as "pci1102,2", "pci1102,4", and "pci1102,8".) I've not tested many of them though -- only the SB0100, CT4670, SB0310, and SB0360 have been tested, and I've been unable to verify SPDIF or expansion box functionality, but it should work.

To test, you'll need Boomer, which means build 115 of OpenSolaris or newer. I've only tested with build 124, and I recommend using 124 or newer if possible.

If you test it, I'd like to see the output from "cat /dev/sndstat", and as much testing of inputs and outputs (try different mixer controls, as well!) as you can. I'm hoping to integrate this code into Nevada in the next week or so.

hme shrinks by about 40%

I just removed about 40% of the code from "hme", by converting it to use the common MII layer. It also makes it use Brussels, and fixes an old bug relating to 10 Mbps functionality. Another net negative lines of code integration for me. I wonder if this confuses ohloh.net's accounting?

OpenSolaris on snv_124 Impressions

I've bitten the bullet, and finally installed "OpenSolaris" over my SXCE install, upgrading from build 105 to build 124 in the process. I thought I'd share some things I've noticed:

• Gnome's volume control Just Works, and doesn't show the legacy Sun device anymore. (Yay!)
• There is a 12 MB Core file on the CD ... er... too big... DVD ... image. (Oops!) Maybe someone was hoping the community would jointly debug the program that generated the core file. (gtk-update-icon).
• Still no /bin/tcsh installed by default. Fortunately easy to get off the network for this machine. (For other systems, not so easy. This really ought to be fixed.)
• AudioHD has a really, really annoying beep on this system. The beep volume control doesn't take effect until you lower it to 33%. (And then it gets really quiet.) This is a bug that I'll have to investigate further, there's probably some codec tweaking needed.
  
• Regular SunOS vi has been replaced with vim, which has an incredibly obnoxious bug. It doesn't scroll down properly, redrawing on the last line in the terminal window instead of the whole screen. This is IMO at least a P2 bug against the editor. The old editor in SXCE, while maybe lacking some neat colorization features and not being open source, at least worked properly.
  
• Trying to install CUPS using the package manager GUI fails with a horrible stack back trace. While the request is is made to report the problem with the stack back trace, there is no provision to save it or e-mail it. So alas, I don't have it anymore to post. It should be easily reproducible. (It looked like a problem relating to the SMF configuration.)

I have a lot more to do... so many things are at the moment still missing. But I think I'll be able to muddle on at this point. (The vim bug is going to really, really bug me though, because there isn't an easy workaround -- apart from just copying over the old vi from SXCE.)

Update: Turns out /usr/xpg4/bin/vi (which is what I had in my path anyway) doesn't have this problem. And its installed by default. Yay. But someone really needs to fix vim, because that bug is horrible.

Update 2: When I logged in using my old home dir, the Gnome panel which I had configured for auto_hide did hide itself. But unfortunately would not unhide itself with any mouse actions. The only way I could get it to unhide was to disable the auto_hide property using gconftool2. Unfortunately, it took a while to figure out how to use this.

Giving up on laptop-discuss@

Here's a message I sent to laptop-discuss-owner at opensolaris.org:

Okay, I've tried *three* different addresses to post to laptop-discuss@... each time the message bounces.

The addresses I tried:

gdamore@sun.com
garrett.damore@sun.com
garrett@damore.org

I give up. The list is *unusable* to community members, because of a draconian list policy that instead of just moderating reasonable attempts to post to the list just *bounces* them. This community (laptop-discuss@) will no longer be able to receive mail from me, despite the fact that I'm probably one of the more active contributors to the software that makes up core laptop platform support.

If you think your membership ought to be able to hear from me, then please make it easier for me (and for other people) who have a legitimate need to post to the list. Simple moderation with white and blacklisting can be used to achieve this.

- Garrett

For the record, the message I tried to post was:

I'm considering a case to remove/EOF the partial (incomplete) support we have for certain Tadpole laptops in Nevada.

I'd like feedback on this. Is anyone out there still using a Tadpole SPARCLE with OpenSolaris or Solaris Nevada?

The reason for this is the intention to remove support for graphics (its already not present in OpenSolaris). I never got enough cycles to finish the work to integrate power management or other mobility features for this platform (SPARCLE), and now it seems to be quite obsolete. We're talking about UltraSPARC-II (up to 650 MHz max cpu speed) systems here.

Would anyone here strongly object to just removing the support?

- Garrett

The bounce messages I received look like this:

You are not allowed to post to this mailing list, and your message has
been automatically rejected.  If you think that your messages are
being rejected in error, contact the mailing list owner at
laptop-discuss-owner@opensolaris.org.

The problem is that draconian list membership/posting rules make posting updates incredibly painful. If you think my contributions to the forum are or would be useful, please ask the list moderator to start actually moderating the list instead of just setting it on auto-reject. (At this point, I don't remember which vanity address I subscribed to the list using... at the moment, I'm just about to the point of not caring. I've already reached this point with driver-discuss@ - on more than one occasion I've simply decided not to keep trying to send a message to that alias because of the same stupid draconian policy.