Quake3 engine sound vs 2.4.16 custom kernel...

[urinal cake]

OK I have MDK 8.1 (2.4.8-26mdk). I have recompiled same version from the mandrake sources, taking out a bunch of unneded junk, and everything works fine. I installed the 2314/2313 NVidia's from .tar.gz.
I also compiled 2.4.16, starting with my config from the earlier kernel to work off of. X loads fine, the Mesa demos run fine. Nothing that uses the Quake3 engine will run (Q3, Wolfenstein redux). Q3 based apps quit with Signal 11 as soon as sound starts to initialize. I rebuilt both kernel driver and GLX from .src.rpm for the new knernel w/no luck. Also recompiled 2.4.16 w/out agpgart support with same results. I started quake3 from termial with ./quake3 and noticed that as soon as it starts sound initialization is when it craps out. One area of the kernel config that I didn't change at all was sound, though. Any ideas?

[bwkaz]

I was going to post a link to a thread where we found out that for some reason, Q3's sound doesn't like OSS Yamaha drivers. But then I realized that the problem there was that there was no sound, not that it was segfaulting.

You're running Mandrake 8.1, that means you're using devfs. So check the permissions on /dev/sound/*, and make sure that if the world doesn't have write permission, that you are in a group that does (...assuming there is a group that does).

Generally if you don't have permission to the sound device you can get it by adding yourself to the audio group. I'm pretty sure you can do this with Linuxconf, or maybe one of Mandrake's tools.

[urinal cake]

OK, now wolf works, but Q3 is still bombing at sound initialization. I guess that's progress. *scratches head...wanders off muttering..

[ 20 February 2002: Message edited by: urinal cake ]

[Closer]

urinal cake I shamlessly stole this from quake3 faq

The first thing to check is that it is actually a sound related. Run the game with +set s_initsound 0 and see what happens. All problems reported so far about sound turned out to be OS/drivers. Listed below:

On some Mandrake distr
ibutions:
Check if you are running the enlightenment sound daemon (esd). With ps aux | grep esd for instance. It is a multiplexer for /dev/dsp, and might block use of /dev/dsp by Quake III Arena. You can disable esd with esdctl stop (as root).

Mandrake 8's default sound drivers seem broken, installing the Alsa drivers or the http://www.opensound.com drivers fixes the problem.

Some beta Alsa drivers have been reported to crash with Q3. Non-beta ones are fine.

VIA chipset and AC97 driver:
This combination is known to have various issues. They have been fixed in recent drivers (thanks to Arne Schmitz for the heads up):
http://sourceforge.net/projects/gkernel has got the up to date version of
the AC97 kernel driver. The current version can be found here:
http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/gkernel/via82cxxx-1.1.15.tar.gz

It has working mmap sound, so Q3 shouldn't be a problem any more.

closer

[Closer]

urinal cake I shamlessly stole this from quake3 faq

The first thing to check is that it is actually a sound related. Run the game with +set s_initsound 0 and see what happens. All problems reported so far about sound turned out to be OS/drivers. Listed below:

On some Mandrake distr
ibutions:
Check if you are running the enlightenment sound daemon (esd). With ps aux | grep esd for instance. It is a multiplexer for /dev/dsp, and might block use of /dev/dsp by Quake III Arena. You can disable esd with esdctl stop (as root).

Mandrake 8's default sound drivers seem broken, installing the Alsa drivers or the http://www.opensound.com drivers fixes the problem.

Some beta Alsa drivers have been reported to crash with Q3. Non-beta ones are fine.

VIA chipset and AC97 driver:
This combination is known to have various issues. They have been fixed in recent drivers (thanks to Arne Schmitz for the heads up):
http://sourceforge.net/projects/gkernel has got the up to date version of
the AC97 kernel driver. The current version can be found here:
http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/gkernel/via82cxxx-1.1.15.tar.gz

It has working mmap sound, so Q3 shouldn't be a problem any more.

closer

[urinal cake]

Thanks. I have emu10k1 card (SB512PCI), so the AC97 doesn't apply. I've been aware that the sound, as installed, is flaky. I guess I'll have to get to work fixing it. I've heard good things about ALSA. I actually have that option in Mandrake, but it doesn't work at all.

[urinal cake]

Well it's definitely sound-related. Running without sound, Q3 works fine. I'm on a custom 2.4.18 now, but Q3 sound only works on 2.4.8-26mdk based kernels, custom or not. Now to figure out what's different about the kernels. Thanks for the pointers.