aRts can't find /dev/dsp

Tue May 27 11:20:01 2003

> finally got YDL 3.0 installed (by taking the scsi drive to a
> different machine, installing it and then putting it back into the  9600
> w the sonnettech G3 card. heh.)
> and it *mostly* works fine. sure is a lot faster than 2.3! and
> actually can use a usb wheel mouse..cool.
>
> two problems i am having: one is that startx into kde won't load the
> sound stuff, aRts gives an error message that /dev/dsp can't be found
> (i looked: it's there...and owned crwxrwx---)
> ?  i'd like to get that working considering that most of what i do is
> with sound...

I  had the same problem but the sound was working I thought. I never
really addressed the issue and I  no longer use Yellow Dog,  however,  I 
believe I  would have added the module of your soundcard to the
modules.autoload. As far as the permissions,  if you are not the owner or
in the group of the /dev/dsp those permissions will not allow you to use
the sound. You will need rw for the others sectioon. However,  I do not
believe the later should be a problem because I redhat based distributions
change the permissions at runtime. Gentoo on the other hand uses a
specific group yielding a more controlled environment.

Also,  there is a nice sound config utility as I remember. Maybe that is
why I did not have problems after that but I do not know for sure.

> second and less important but still annoying, is the video config.
> disregarding for a moment the fact that there are two monitors and i
> would like to use both, the main is a nec xv15+, the card is an ATI
> radeon 7000. sounds easy. but it will only display X in 600x480. if i
> try to configure for 800x600, it starts x as sideways lines of blue  and
> white...is it just scan rate? some other overlooked mistake?
>

If you do not care much about the 3d capabilities of your card. An easy
fix is to use the framebuffer device. This might require you to pass
optional parameters to the kernel. For instance, I have a Rage 128
therefore I have to pass: kernel video=aty128fb:vmode:20. Find out what is
the option for your card if any. If I do not add those parameters I up
with a black screen.  After that you configure X without using the ati
driver; use the fbdev instead. Of course, you will have to have support
for that in the kernel like the default Yellow Dog kernel. Try doing a
XFree86 -configure. This will probe check out your hardware against the
available drivers and create an XFree86.conf which might be ready to use.

I hope that helps, and enjoy Linux!

> any help is truly appreciated...
> --
> _________________________________________________________________
> Jonathan Segel  -- MAGNETIC -- PO Box 460816 S.F. CA. 94146-0816
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