Sound Blaster Live! OSS Drivers
CONVENTIONS USED

With Mandrake 8.2, I had very good sound. With Mandrake 9, that was gone. I was able to get part of it back, but not the tone controls. So, here is a quick and dirty tutorial to get the latest driver working.

Because I am getting more experienced with Linux lately, I've been getting lazier and lazier... I don't feel like typing out every single little detail. So I think that all my tutorials from now on will be a little more advanced than previously. The other simpler stuff has become second nature to me. With that said, I'll again assume you have the necessary programs installed, such that you can compile things and they work.

First things first; get the two files you will need from SourceForge. The files that I used are: emu-tools-0.9.4-1.i386.rpm and emu10k1-v0.20a.tar.bz2. This tutorial will be based on these two files. Replace where necessary.

Open a console in the directory where you downloaded the two files to.

First, install the RPM. This is easy to do, so we'll just get it over with. If you have an older version installed, remove that first. Then, just run rpm -ivh emu-tools-0.9.4-1.i386.rpm as root in console. Now we can move on.

Type in tar jxvf emu10k1-v0.20a.tar.bz2. This will extract the source for the driver.

Now type in cd emu10k1-v0.20a. In here, you can and should edit the file called config. Find the line that says Sequencer = n and change it to say Sequencer = y.

Next, type in make. After that, type in make again. The driver should be compiling now. Hopefully it won't fail. If it does, then the problem is that you are missing probably your kernel-source or even gcc.

Next, type in su and then make install. If you use checkinstall, you could substitute it for make install. This will actually install the driver. If you get an error, switch your card to the ALSA driver via draksound and reboot.

If it fails again, open a console, switch to root, then do lsmod. If you see any of the following modules listed, then remove them:

  • snd-pcm-oss
  • snd-mixer-oss
  • snd-emu10k1
  • snd-pcm
  • snd-timer
  • snd-util-mem
  • snd-rawmidi
  • snd-seq-device
  • snd-ac97-codec
  • snd-hwdep
  • emu10k1-gp
  • emu10k1
  • audigy
  • ac97_codec
  • sound
  • soundcore

    To remove them, type in rmmod modulename where modulename is one of the above listed. Remember that the order you remove them is important, as one module may use another one. So if you get an error while removing one, just skip it and go back to it later. The ouput of lsmod will tell you which modules are used be each module, if you would like to check there.

    Now try the make install again.

    When it is done, you may receive messages telling you that you can do make and install the tools. You don't have to do this, as there are tools already installed.

    Next, use your favorite editor as root to edit /etc/modules.conf.

    Remove any old lines that have to do with the above listing of modules above. You can just use a pound sign (#) to comment them out if you are unsure what you are doing.

    Once you've done that, go to the bottom of the file and add these lines:

    alias sound emu10k1
    post-install emu10k1 /usr/local/etc/emu-script
    

    Save the changes, reboot and enjoy the sound! You should now have bass and treble controls in KMix, Aumix, or your favorite sound mixer.

    Note that you don't have to reboot if you want to try doing a modprobe emu10k1 as root in a console. If that works, then you're all set. You may also have to run /usr/local/etc/emu-script by hand as well. If that doesn't work, just stick to the reboot step.


  • © D. Olson 2001-2003 -- Originally found on The Mandrake eXPerience