ALSA Utilities

Download Source:	ftp://ftp.alsa-project.org/pub/utils/alsa-utils-1.0.27.2.tar.bz2

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Introduction to ALSA Utilities

The ALSA Utilities package contains various utilities which are useful for controlling your sound card.

Dependencies

Required

• ALSA Library

Non-Multilib

Compile the package:

./configure &&
make

Install the package

make install

Multilib

This package does not provide any libraries so only one installation is needed.

32Bit

Compile the package:

CC="gcc ${BUILD32}" ./configure &&
make

Install the package

make install

N32

Compile the package:

CC="gcc ${BUILDN32}" ./configure &&
make

Install the package

make install

64Bit

Compile the package:

CC="gcc ${BUILD64}" ./configure &&
make

Install the package

make install

Configuration Information

Use a bootscript to store the values at shutdown.

As the root user, install the init script /etc/rc.d/init.d/alsa included in the blfs-bootscripts package.

make install-alsa

Note that all channels of your sound card are muted by default. You can use the alsamixer program from the ALSA Utilities to change this.

The first time the alsactl program is run from the udev rule below, it will complain that there is no state in /etc/asound.state. You can prevent this by running the following commands as the root user:

touch /etc/asound.state &&
alsactl store

As the root user, install a new Udev rules file to create the audio device nodes and run the restore script:

cat > /etc/udev/rules.d/15-alsa.rules << "EOF"
# Give the audio group ownership of sound devices
SUBSYSTEM=="sound",       GROUP="audio"
SUBSYSTEM=="snd",         GROUP="audio"

# ALSA Devices
# When a sound device is detected, restore the volume settings
KERNEL=="controlC[0-9]*",  NAME="snd/%k", ACTION=="add", RUN+="/usr/sbin/alsactl restore %n"
KERNEL=="hw[CD0-9]*",      NAME="snd/%k"
KERNEL=="pcm[CD0-9cp]*",   NAME="snd/%k"
KERNEL=="midiC[D0-9]*",    NAME="snd/%k"
KERNEL=="timer",           NAME="snd/%k"
KERNEL=="seq",             NAME="snd/%k"
EOF
chmod 644 /etc/udev/rules.d/15-alsa.rules

• Note for users with multiple soundcards

Alsa tutorial for multiple soundcards

Contents

• Installed Programs: alsactl, alsaconf, alsamixer, amidi, amixer, aplay, iecset, aconnect, aplaymidi, arecordmidi, aseqdump, aseqnet, speaker-test
• Installed Directories: /usr/share/alsa/speaker-test, /usr/share/sounds/alsa