Brief ALSA/Gnome warning

[David Walker]

Michael Richter wrote:

> I had an unlikely clash of bugs that almost had me reinstalling my 
> system until I had a flash of insight.  Here are the bugs that led to 
> it.  There's only two bugs, but they interact in nasty ways.
>
> 1.  The ALSA drivers for the Sound Blaster external USB sound card do 
> not like it when the Sound Blaster is positioned through two layers of 
> hub.  That is to say computer->hub->Sound Blaster is OK, but 
> computer->hub->hub->Sound Blaster is not.  (I've now experimentally 
> confirmed this about a dozen times.)  On startup, though, when ALSA is 
> configuring cards, it will not complain.  It will say "setting up ALSA 
> card <whatever>" without a hiccup.
>
> 2.  GNOME very stupidly will wait forever to play its opening sound 
> when logging in.  If the system refuses to play the opening sound, it 
> will hang forever.  You will not get that little bar which lists off 
> the services being started (Metacity, Nautilus, et al).  You will 
> instead get a blank background screen (I'm still using the default), a 
> mouse pointer and nothing else.
>
> Working out this bug took a long time -- mostly because I couldn't 
> characterise it at first.  I initially blamed some external hard 
> drives, but that was a blind alley.  It was only when I shutdown to 
> single-user level and started up gdm that I noticed a) it logged in 
> finally and b) it complained about HAL not being available.  That's 
> when I had my little flash of insight.
>
> To fix this, developers need to do one of three things:
> 1.  Have ALSA work with the Sound Blaster card through two layers of 
> hubs.  (This may not be possible, depending on the Sound Blaster itself.)
> 2.  Have ALSA recognise that the computer->hub->hub->SB layout is 
> untenable and report that it is not allowed.
> 3.  Have GNOME not wait for the sound to play before logging in.  Or 
> at least put a timeout on it.
>
> Still having fun with my all-Ubuntu system.  ;-)

I as well have had the same issue.  But got over it by defaulting back 
to my SBpci512.  Oh woe is me.

--
dave