[PLUG] Kubuntu sound and ~/.asoundrc

[Eric Wilhelm]

# from Denis Heidtmann
# on Tuesday 08 July 2008 16:46:

>>>why does removing .asoundrc and .asoundrc.asoundconf 
>>>get things working?

I think it comes down to whatever was in those configs asking alsa to do 
the impossible.  I'm sure it was valid for your previous installation - 
and possibly generated by an older version of some config tool.  Major 
changes to device names (e.g. by the kernel, udev, etc), or possibly 
improvements in alsa which rendered an old work-around obsolete?  Or 
simply that the default configs (/usr/share/alsa/) renamed something -- 
the wiki says "Before ALSA 1.0.9 you often needed one to make things 
work at all ..."

>No, I had not.  Thanks for the link.  I just browsed it, and it makes
> me feel that deleting those files was a good idea. I note that
> /etc/asound.conf does not exist on my system either.
>
>There must be something in those files which tells ALSA to do the
> wrong things.

Yeah.  I think "the wrong things" were:

>>> ALSA lib confmisc.c:1286:(snd_func_refer) Unable to find definition 
>>> 'defaults.pcm.dmix.device'
>>> ...
>>> ALSA lib pcm.c:2145:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM default
>>> aplay: main:546: audio open error: No such file or directory

At least that sounds like the config was trying to point to a 
non-existent device or something like it being told that your preferred 
devices is the null string.

>>> This same collection of errors are produced if aplay is run as root.

For what value of "$HOME"?  It sounds like it was still loading the 
config from your user's $HOME. I wouldn't expect root's permissions to 
get past the "No such file or directory" -- root is all-powerful, but 
he can't make the software all-knowing ;-)

--Eric
-- 
"But as to modern architecture, let us drop it and let us take
modernistic out and shoot it at sunrise."
--F.L. Wright
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