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Open Sound System for Linux x86

NOTICE:Support for libc5 versions will be withdrawn after November 1, 1999 - no more new updates will be made available

What's New?

  • Announcing OSS for Linux v3.9.2x (November 1, 1999)
    • Support for new Mandrake 6.1 (2.2.13-22mdk SMP) kernels.
    • Intel 810 chipset sound suport announced
    • Sound Blaster Live! beta-3 drivers announced
      • SMP support and Linux 2.0.XX support fixed!.
      • Fixed up problems with Quake/MpegTV
      • Quake, Civ:CTP, RealPlayer, KMIDI, XMMS, etc all work fine!
      • Recording only works for 16bit Mono/stereo and for sample rates > 32KHz
      • Rear channel volume control will be coming shortly....right now there's no way to control the volume. We recommend that you simply unplug the rear channel speakers
    • Support for new Sound Blaster PCI128 (ES1371 based - 5880-DBQ chips) now available
    • Vortex 1 and 2 timeouts have been fixed. Read the current driver limitations
    • Yamaha DSXG drivers updated!
      • Full duplex now supported. Problems with MTV and other apps fixed
      • Quake Sound now works and support for mmap() now available
      • You may occasionally get a "AC97 not alive" message when you run soundon. There is some kind of timing bug with certain implementations of the Yamaha DSXG chips and usually running soundoff and soundon again fixes the problem. If you don't want to keep running soundoff and soundon, it's best to simply add soundon; soundoff; soundon to the rc.local scripts. Search for the bug is still in progress
    • Maestro2 driver notes
      • Maestro2E updates.....support for ASL, ASUS, Gateway and Toshiba laptops
      • Laptop users must set the PowerSave mode to OFF (or None). We are investigating the powersave mode support. Toshiba laptop users may need to run laptops with powersupply instead of battery. Alternatively, configure the BIOS to set APM to MODE 2
      • If you get a system hang on a laptop, then configure PCMCIA services to ignore 0x200-0x27f, 0x300-0x3ff and then ensure that none of the interrupts used by OSS for MIDI are used by any PCMCIA device.

        Edit line 6 of /etc/pcmcia/config.opts and change it to: 

        include port 0x300-0x4ff, port 0x1000-0x17ff
      • Due to a hardware bug, stereo 16 bit will only be heard as MONO. ESS says that they do stereo 16bit output in Windows by splitting the wave data into two mono 16bit streams and then play them back simultaneously. This is currenlty not possible to do in OSS. 8bit stereo works fine
      • To playback mp3s you will need to use 8bit stereo mode - however 16bit wav files, MODs, Real Audio and timidity work fine - we're investigating the cause of the overdriven sounds for mp3s.

Virtual Mixer Notes:

You can now use 8 virtual audio devices when you configure SoftOSS device. This allows you to play 8 simultaneous audio streams (ie. run 8 simultaneous audio apps) and the SoftOSS MIDI synth and hear audio output completely mixed in real-time with SoftOSS. Previously, if an application was playing audio, then you could not play another audio file concurrently. With Virtual Mixer, you get the same capabilities as a Mac!.

Please read these notes

Disabling OSS/Free driver modules in the system

If OSS/Linux complains that another driver is already running, B you need to do these steps to disable OSS/Free kernel modules: 
rm /lib/modules/2.2.5-15/misc/soundcore.o
rm /lib/modules/2.2.5-15/misc/sound.o 
rm /lib/modules/2.2.5-15/misc/soundlow.o
Now edit /etc/conf.modules and delete all sound related entries. Reboot the machine so that no kernel sound drivers get loaded or type: 
rmmod soundlow
rmmod sound
rmmod soundcore
Now proceed to install OSS/Linux.

Recompiling your kernel

If you get kernel incompatibility errors, the follow the steps below: Run make xconfig/make menuconfig and enable CONFIG_MODVERSIONS:
[*] Set version information on all symbols for modules
Now save the kernel configuration and do the following step: 
rm /usr/src/linux/include/linux/modversions.h
rm /usr/src/linux/include/linux/modules/*
make dep
make clean
make bzImage
make modules
make modules_install
make install (to install the kernel)
reboot and log back in as root.

Now run oss-install to reinstall OSS.

Debian Linux installation Notes:

The problem under Debian is that the linux kernel is not installed under /usr/src/linux - so you just need to ensure that /usr/src/linux links to the directory containing the Linux kernel sources. Additionally, Debian ships with /usr/include/linux and /usr/include/asm that are directories that are the header files that are used to build Debian. These technically should be the header files from the kernel source tree so you really have to remove these directories and link /usr/include/linux and /usr/include/asm to the kernel source directory. Please follow the steps below. 
ln -s /usr/src/linux-xxxx /usr/src/linux
mv /usr/include/linux /usr/include/linux.orig
mv /usr/include/asm /usr/include/asm.orig
ln -s /usr/src/linux/include/linux /usr/include/linux
ln -s /usr/src/linux/include/asm /usr/include/asm

Using OSS on patched kernels:

You can use OSS if you've applied kernel patches like the "-ac" from Alan Cox or "-arca" Andrea Arcangeli if you edit the top level Makefile in the linux kernel sources and remove the "EXTRA_VERSION" tag. OSS Modules will only look for the "released kernel version". For example: The patched kernels for 2.2.5 with the Alan Cox ac5 patch have kernel symbols tagged with 2.2.5-ac5 and this prevents. So just setting the kernel version back to 2.2.5 fixes the problem. Usually, we release a version for the "released kernels" within 24 hours but if you're in a hurry, you can simply set the kernel version number back to the currently available version of OSS and then install OSS. This means changing the version information in the toplevel Makefile in the Linux sources.

Linux 2.3.xx support:

Currently we are waiting for the Linux 2.3.xx kernels to stabilize. Due to the rapid pace of development on 2.3 we just cannot keep up with releasing OSS and having to to regression testing. 2.3.xx patches are being released on almost a daily basis and we just don't have the bandwidth to support OSS on all these patches. In addition, we cannot provide tech support for development kernels as there are too many variables. Thanks for your understanding.
Webpage last updated on: November 11, 1999 12:35PST