Open Sound System

Did anyone manage to compile a cuckoo module for current (3.1x) kernels ?... I tried with Linux v3.19.2, and lamentably failed.

Beside header issues (linux/autoconf.h and asm/system.h) which can't be found any more (I replaced the '#include <linux/autoconf.h>' with '#include </usr/src/linux/include/generated/autoconf.h>' and commented out '#include <asm/system.h>', both in cuckoo.h), there's the problem with snd_card_create() having been replaced with snd_card_new() in recent kernels (starting with v3.16.0), and the latter takes a (PCI) device structure pointer as the first parameter, which I don't know how to obtain in cuckoo.c...

Could any devel look at this issue ?...

As time passes, less and less pieces of software support native OSS (alas !!!), and the cuckoo is pretty much the only solution with them, unless you are ready to put up with the Pulseaudio non-sense (a sound demon is totally useless with OSS anyway, thanks to the transparent virtual mixer).

oss117 wrote:As time passes, less and less pieces of software support native OSS (alas !!!), and the cuckoo is pretty much the only solution with them, unless you are ready to put up with the Pulseaudio non-sense (a sound demon is totally useless with OSS anyway, thanks to the transparent virtual mixer).

1. According to the OSS Wiki, the cuckoo module is expected to "fail on most systems" _http://www.opensound.com/wiki/index.php/Tips_And_Tricks#ALSA_Emulation
This may mean that "it fails on any system".

2. The cuckoo module can hardly be a solution to all problems, because "less and less pieces of software support" ALSA and/or Linux.

Skype does not support both ALSA and OSS4, and it may not support Linux in the near future.
There is, however, an OSS-wrapper for Skype. It seems to work _http://www.opensound.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=5762

Perhaps, it makes sense to fork PulseAudio...

igorzwx wrote:

oss117 wrote:As time passes, less and less pieces of software support native OSS (alas !!!), and the cuckoo is pretty much the only solution with them, unless you are ready to put up with the Pulseaudio non-sense (a sound demon is totally useless with OSS anyway, thanks to the transparent virtual mixer).

1. According to the OSS Wiki, the cuckoo module is expected to "fail on most systems" _http://www.opensound.com/wiki/index.php/Tips_And_Tricks#ALSA_Emulation
This may mean that "it fails on any system".

The "failure" I encountered is only due to the newer kernels APIs and thus to a lack of maintenance of the cuckoo code. This means that, in its current state, the cuckoo module will fail on any system running a 3.16+ kernel (i.e. any modern kernel) and not just "on most systems"...

2. The cuckoo module can hardly be a solution to all problems, because "less and less pieces of software support" ALSA and/or Linux.

Please, re-read my post... I never said it was "a solution to all problems" but only that "the cuckoo is pretty much the only solution with [pieces of software not supporting native OSS], unless you are ready to put up with the Pulseaudio non-sense"... It simply means that if you don't want to use a sound demon (which OSS doesn't need *at all*, unlike ALSA), your only solution with software without OSS support (i.e. not even using library such as libasound, portaudio & Co) is the cuckoo... Note that FMOD recently dropped OSS support (FMOD Ex still supports it, but is already listed in the "previous products" section of their website, while the current FMOD Studio product is not supporting OSS any more).

Perhaps, it makes sense to fork PulseAudio...

PulseAudio does not make sense in the first place. It's USELESS with OSS. Why we, OSS users, would have to put up with all its non-sense JUST to run some pieces of software not supporting OSS ?... The better approach is to offer a working cuckoo module, so that software that expect ALSA and only ALSA to be present under Linux can at least work with OSS (thinking it's ALSA they are talking to).

I therefore reiterate my question... Could any devel look at this issue ?...

oss117 wrote:Could any devel look at this issue?.

You may ask them directly. It seems that cesium was busy with the cuckoo module

oss117 wrote:PulseAudio does not make sense in the first place. It's USELESS with OSS..

PulseAudio does make sense, because it is "open source". You can always fork it, and you can fork it to such an extent that it may become a harmless wrapper.
There is already such wrapper for Skype. It is very useful with OSS4 _http://www.opensound.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=5762

ALSA users also forked PulseAudio. They created a sort of wrapper named "apulse"
_https://github.com/i-rinat/apulse
[skype] apulse - PulseAudio emulation for ALSA
_https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=187258

igorzwx wrote:

oss117 wrote:Could any devel look at this issue?.

You may ask them directly.

This exactly what I'm doing here, in this forum... I have no other "direct" way to do this !

It seems that cesium was busy with the cuckoo module

Good to hear...

oss117 wrote:PulseAudio does not make sense in the first place. It's USELESS with OSS..

PulseAudio does make sense, because it is "open source". You can always fork it, and you can fork it to such an extent that it may become a harmless wrapper.

I don't know why you are insisting on me using PulseAudio... I DON'T want it, I DON'T need it. The cuckoo module offers an ALSA emulation layer for pieces of software which (stupidely) dropped OSS support, and that's all what is needed.

There is already such wrapper for Skype.

I don't use Skype, so I don't care... And making a specific wrapper out of a demon for each individual application that doesn't support OSS doesn't sound like an easy way to solve a more generic issue anyway.

oss117 wrote:I don't use Skype, so I don't care... And making a specific wrapper out of a demon for each individual application that doesn't support OSS doesn't sound like an easy way to solve a more generic issue anyway.

Are you going to say that the cuckoo module is an easy solution to your "generic issue"?

OSSv4 cuckoo module:
Harder, and will fail on most systems. It works by representing OSSv4 drivers as a soundcard to the ALSA modules, and supplying a "driver" for them.
_http://www.opensound.com/wiki/index.php/Tips_And_Tricks#ALSA_Emulation

Have you ever tried to hack ALSA?

oss117 wrote:I don't know why you are insisting on me using PulseAudio... I DON'T want it, I DON'T need it.

If you hate the word "PulseAudio", you may call it anti-pulse (apulse) _https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=187258

oss117 wrote:Could any devel look at this issue ?...

Hi oss117!
You might try contacting the defacto last active developer dev. I could always successfully reach him via his email dev[at]opensound.com. He even fixed some stuff for me.
However I also motivated him a bit by buying their oss license (merely 10 bucks)^^

Good luck!

nuc wrote:

oss117 wrote:Could any devel look at this issue ?...

You might try contacting the defacto last active developer dev. I could always successfully reach him via his email dev[at]opensound.com.

I will try, thanks !

Have you tried making first parameter NULL?
e.g. snd_card_new (NULL, index[ncards], ...

Cuckoo has never worked for me. I get:

aplay: main:722: audio open error: Cannot allocate memory

but if it worked with an earlier kernel you may be in luck.

Another problem I have is that the module name appears in quotes when running lsmod necessitating escaping them when using rmmod.
e.g. rmmod \"cuckoo\"

seawright wrote:Have you tried making first parameter NULL?
e.g. snd_card_new (NULL, index[ncards], ...

Cuckoo has never worked for me. I get:

aplay: main:722: audio open error: Cannot allocate memory

but if it worked with an earlier kernel you may be in luck.

Another problem I have is that the module name appears in quotes when running lsmod necessitating escaping them when using rmmod.
e.g. rmmod \"cuckoo\"

Another problem is how to disable ALSA resamplers.

To solve this problem, one may need to study the source code of ALSA and create his own plugin (similar to Petrov's ALSA plugin).

What is more, the OSS4 developers may need to study the source code of ALSA in order to fix the "cuckoo module".

It is not very probable that the OSS4 developers may support such "magic solutions to all problems".