Category: PC Tweakage

Multiple sound cards pose a problem for ALSA, because they don’t appear in the same order on every boot. This is particularly true for hotplugged USB stuff, but it can also affect PCI and system board audio devices.

The symptom is that you suddenly don’t hear any sound. The reason is that ALSA is dutifully piping sound through the card that’s not connected to your speakers.

The fix is straightforward, if not at all obvious: force the proper card to be Card 0, then force the ALSA default PCM output to use that card. Either should work alone, but both together will enforce the decision.

Find out which drivers are in use:

cat /proc/asound/cards
 0 [AudioPCI       ]: ENS1371 - Ensoniq AudioPCI
                      Ensoniq AudioPCI ENS1371 at 0xb8c0, irq 16
 1 [Headset        ]: USB-Audio - Logitech USB Headset
                      Logitech Logitech USB Headset at usb-0000:00:1d.3-1, full speed
 2 [Intel          ]: <strong>HDA-Intel</strong> - HDA Intel
                      HDA Intel at 0xfebfc000 irq 16

The system-board sound hardware uses the HDA-Intel driver, which should be Card 0 and the default sound output.

Add this to the bottom of /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base, prefixing the module name from the /proc/asound/cards list with snd-

#--- hack to get sound ordering correct
options snd-hda-intel index=0

Find out what ALSA thinks is possible:

aplay -L
 ... snippage ...
front:CARD=Intel,DEV=0
    HDA Intel, STAC92xx Analog
    Front speakers
 ... snippage ...

Create /etc/asound.conf (because it’s not created by default) and add this, using the name from the appropriate CARD= entry:

# Hack to order the cards correctly
pcm.!default front:Intel

This is one of those gotta-reboot events, because removing & reinstalling modules, then restarting ALSA, just isn’t worth the effort for a single-user desktop box.

Update: Except that sometimes it still doesn’t work. The dmesg report shows

[   36.779814] ENS1371 0000:05:04.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 16 (level, low) ->IRQ 16
[   36.922744] cannot find the slot for index 0 (range 0-0), error: -16
[   36.922808] hda-intel: Error creating card!
[   36.924631] HDA Intel: probe of 0000:00:1b.0 failed with error -12

From which I infer that the Ensoniq card gets polled first, grabs slot 0, and then the Intel driver can’t get a word in edgewise.

Next step: another line at the bottom of /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base:

options snd-ens1371 index=2

Update: You’ll probably find that Adobe Flash still plays through the wrong audio device. There’s no obvious was to reconfigure it, so just blow away its own setup and let it start over with the audio cards sorted properly:

cd ~
rm -rf .adobe/Flash_Player
rm -rf .macromedia/Flash_Player

Those of long memory will recall that Macromedia cooked up Flash before getting Borged by Adobe.

While you’re under the hood, turn off Flash cookies.

Wine, the Windows emulator for Linux, has gotten to the point where it works pretty well for most non-USB-gadget-related Windows programs that I’m still forced to use. For whatever reason, the out-of-the-box Wine system UI fonts are eye-burning tiny.

Perhaps they’re well suited for 640×480 monitors?

Anyhow, fire up the Wine configuration editor (which may be a menu entry or just type winecfg at a command prompt), go to the Desktop Integration tab, look in the Appearance section, and scroll down through the various Item entries. Some entries enable the adjacent Font button, a click of which will allow you to whack ’em into sensibility.

All the fonts defaulted (for my installation, anyway) to 6 point Andale Mono. Not sensible.

Don’t follow the well-meaning advice you’ll find elsewhere to tweak the Screeen Resolution setting from whatever the default is. That forces Wine to interpolate from Windows dots to X dots and the outcome is not pretty.

Might as well put all this all in one place for reference; that’s what this blog is all about.

Relevant for Xubuntu 8.10 with XFCE 4.6

Do that to get static network addresses.

Do that to get /dev/scanner created, which might not be needed with USB scanners.

Install xinetd

Create /etc/xinetd.d/saned with this stanza:

service sane-port
            {
              socket_type = stream
              server = /usr/sbin/saned
              protocol = tcp
              user = saned
              group = scanner
              wait = no
              disable = no
            }

Restart xinetd (this may not be needed): sudo /etc/init.d/xinetd restart

Add the IP addresses of any other local PCs that should be able to use the scanner to /etc/sane.d/saned.conf. If they’re in /etc/hosts, call them by name.

Add the IP address of this PC to the /etc/sane.d/net.conf files on those PCs. Again, if it’s in those /etc/hosts files, call this one by name.

Add the scanner group to any users who need it:
sudo usermod -a -G scanner userid
Log out and back in again to activate your new group membership.

And then it should Just Work…

I use static IP addresses on my simple DNS-free local net, but the 8.10 Gnome Network Manager applet is pooched: you cannot add another entry or change the existing one. Some sources indicate that deleting the existing Auto eth0 entry and adding your own static entry will work, but that failed for me.

Why this remains broken five months after the 8.10 release remains a puzzle, but there it is.

So…

Use the network manager applet to bring the network interface down. Perhaps ifdown will also work, although I don’t recall at this point: sudo ifdown eth0

Use Synaptic to get rid of network-manager and network-manager-gnome. The cute little system tray thing will remain behind until you log in again.

Make /etc/network/interfaces look like this, adjusted for whatever addresses seem appropriate in your network:

# The loopback network interface
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

# The primary network interface
auto eth0
iface eth0 inet static
address 192.168.1.3
netmask 255.255.255.0
network 192.168.1.0
broadcast 192.168.1.255
gateway 192.168.1.1

Make /etc/resolv.conf look like this:

nameserver 208.67.222.222
nameserver 208.67.220.220

OpenDNS runs those nameservers and they may well be faster & better & less intrusive than whatever your ISP offers.

Bring the interface up: sudo ifup eth0

Enjoy …

Even a lean distro like Xubuntu has a bunch of fonts you’ll never use. Which ones you won’t need depends on who you are and where you live, but for my purposes the Asian and Arabic fonts just clutter up the font selection menus.

They’re all in /usr/share/fonts/truetype/, neatly stashed in separate directories. Figure out which ones you don’t need (perhaps browsing with Thunar will help), then:

cd /usr/share/fonts/truetype
sudo rm -rf arphic kochi thai

And so forth and so on, until you’re left with the ones you’ll actually use.

I also have a bunch of fonts I actually paid money for. While this is a single-user box, it’s easy enough to install ’em in the default system locations (rather than a user directory), with a pair of directories to organize them:

cd /usr/local/share/fonts
sudo mkdir truetype
sudo mkdir type1

Then copy the store-bought fonts into the appropriate locations. After doing this a few times, I organized the original fonts under a few directories, so this need not degenerate into a search-and-copy operation every time.

Worst case: when you’re done, just copy those two directories back to your font dump and copy them back for the next installation.

The final step is updating all the font caches, which point to directories & fonts that no longer exist:

sudo fc-cache -f -v

You may need the -r option to forcibly delete existing caches and re-scan from scratch.

More details there.

The details differ, often wildly, among distros, so perhaps this manual command-line fiddling will grossly confuse whatever automated GUI routines you’re supposed to use.