Couple weeks ago I upgraded my mothers computer from Microsoft XP to Linux Debian Lenny (testing). Everything is working except sound with pogo.com java games. After couple weeks searching for a fix and reading ALSA documention and tinkering around.

the problematic soundcard is

$ lspci
...
00:11.5 Multimedia audio controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8233/A/8235/8237 AC97 Audio Controller (rev 70)
...

This is what I ended up with to get the sound to work with the pogo.com java games. First I created the ~/.asoundrc file, and this what I added to the ~/.asoundrc file.

!defaults.pcm.card 0
defaults.ctl.card 0
defaults.pcm.device 0
defaults.pcm.subdevice -1
defaults.pcm.dmix.device defaults.pcm.device
defaults.pcm.dsnoop.device defaults.pcm.device

After saving the file we have to restart ALSA

# /etc/init.d/alsa-utils restart
Shutting down ALSA…done.
Setting up ALSA…done.

Note: this fix may not work for everyone.

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I use a bluetooth headset with VLC when I am using my laptop to listen to music or video streams etc. The headset works when I add alsadev=bluetooth in ~/.vlc/vlcrc

Under the section ‘# ALSA Device Name (string)’ change it

From:

# ALSA Device Name (string)
# alsadev=default

To:

# ALSA Device Name (string)
# alsadev=default
alsadev=bluetooth

Refer to this blog post for setting up bluetooth headset here

Notes:
Problems I have come across is when you change the Audio device back to ‘default’ through Settings => Preferences => Audio => Output modules => ALSA, you have to do the above method again when you like to use bluetooth headset again.

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In this quick brief how to I am going to explain how to to setup Debian for default version of ‘testing’ and being able to install package from ‘unstable’ without having to run Debian ‘unstable’ by default.

First off we are going to edit or create the /etc/apt/apt.conf file:

# nano /etc/apt/apt.conf

and we are going to append this to the file:

APT::Default-Release "testing";

Now we have to edit our /etc/apt/sources.list file and add the ‘unstable’ repository to it.

# nano /etc/apt/sources.list

Here is an example of what my /etc/apt/sources.list file looks like:

deb http://security.debian.org/ testing/updates main contrib non-free
deb http://ftp.au.debian.org/debian/ testing main contrib non-free
deb http://ftp.au.debian.org/debian/ unstable main contrib non-free

Now we have to refresh / update our packages lists by:

# apt-get update

Now we can install packages from the Debian ‘unstable’ repository by doing for example:

# apt-get install -t unstable linux-image-2.6.26-1-686

Here is a brief explanation of what the ‘-t’ option does from the apt-get man page

       -t, --target-release, --default-release
           This option controls the default input to the policy engine, it creates a default pin at priority 990 using the specified release string. The preferences file may further override this
           setting. In short, this option lets you have simple control over which distribution packages will be retrieved from. Some common examples might be -t ´2.1*´ or -t unstable. Configuration Item:
           APT::Default-Release; see also the apt_preferences(5) manual page.

To learn more about apt-get

$ man apt-get

Note: to change linux-image-2.6.26-1-686 package to the package you are after out of the ‘unstable’ repository.

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This is a quick how to setting up bluetooth audio under Debian.

First off we need to install a couple packages:

# apt-get install bluez-utils bluez-gnome bluez-audio

Now we need to run ‘hcitool scan‘ to get the address of the bluetooth device. For example,

$ hcitool scan
Scanning ...
	00:00:00:00:00:00	Nokia BH-501

Now to get the audio part to work:

Modify or create your ~/.asoundrc to contain

pcm.bluetooth {
    type plug
    slave {
       	pcm "bluetooth_hw"
    }
}

pcm.bluetooth_hw {
         type bluetooth
         device 00:11:22:33:44:55
         profile "auto"
}

Where 00:11:22:33:44:55 is the bluetooth address of your headset that you got from ‘hcitool scan‘ output

Now to test the bluetooth headset audio is working with ‘arecord‘ and ‘aplay‘ for example,

$ arecord -Dplug:bluetooth -f S16_LE | aplay -Dplug:bluetooth -f S16_LE
Recording WAVE 'stdin' : Signed 16 bit Little Endian, Rate 8000 Hz, Mono
Playing WAVE 'stdin' : Signed 16 bit Little Endian, Rate 8000 Hz, Mono
Aborted by signal Interrupt...
Aborted by signal Interrupt...

Finally configure your audio applications to use the alsa device ‘bluetooth’.

Example fro setting up Skype to use the bluetooth headset:
Right click on the Skype icon on the gnome-panel and go Options => Sound Devices and change the ‘Sound In’ and ‘Sound Out’ to ‘bluetooth’ and click apply.

And for other applications have a read here

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Nvidia closed source driver has to be modified (for all (71.86.04, 96.43.05, 169.12 and 171.06) but the latest driver (173.08)) in order to run on 2.6.25 as detailed here.

When you apply the patch and generate the custom executable, the install works as advertised.

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With Gnome System Monitor 2.22 under Debian testing (Lenny) I had the problem when I clicked on the Resources tab the CPU usage would got to 100% on my laptop and desktop.

Well I have been able to fix the problem on my laptop which has and Intel video card by adding Option “AccelMethod” “EXA” to the Device section in my xorg.conf file.

Example:

Section "Device"
        Identifier      "Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/GMS, 943/940GML Express Integrated Graphics Controller"
        Driver          "intel"
        BusID           "PCI:0:2:0"
        Option           "AccelMethod"  "EXA"
EndSection

When I have worked out how to fix the problem on my desktop using a Nvidia video card I will post the solution.

Thanks goes out to MistaED for pointing out to me that this a problem with the way Cairo rendering is done.

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For the people that want to run TeamSpeak and Urban Terror together on the one machine here is quick howto to stop TeamSpeak hogging the audio.

1) You need to install alsa-oss

sudo apt-get install alsa-oss

2) goto Applications => Internet, right click on TeamSpeak and add launcher to Panel or Pesktop
3) Right click on the TeamSpeak launcher on Panel or Desktop and goto Properties => Launcher
4) In the command section add ‘aoss‘ in front of ‘teamspeak‘, eg - ‘aoss teamspeak‘
5) close the Properties window and launch TeamSpeak from your modified launcher

enjoy

Notes:
Thanks to MatthewV with his help with testing

This HowTo should work with other games but I have only tested it with Urban Terror

Reference:
Ubuntu alsa-oss

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Compiling
Firstly, there’s a bunch of development libraries and tools that need to be installed,

sudo apt-get install build-essential autotools-dev automake libxml-parser-perl pkg-config libgnome2-dev libgnomeui-dev libxtst-dev libxine-dev libxml2-dev libglade2-dev cdbs libglibmm-2.4-dev libgtkhtml3.8-dev debhelper fakeroot intltool libtool

Next, you’ll want to get the latest version of the source from the Launchpad download page. Extract the source,

tar zxvf me-tv*.tar.gz

Now, compile Me TV,

cd me-tv-*
./autogen.sh
make

The binary should be created at src/me-tv. This binary alone isn’t much use without an existing installation of Me TV because it requires some files to be installed on the system.

Building a deb package
If compiling works then you should be able to build the deb package,

dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot

This will have created the deb package for under the me-tv-* directory

Installing the deb package
To install the deb package you created

sudo dpkg -i me-tv_*.deb

References
Official Me TV Home Page
Me TV 0.4.0 and Ubuntu 7.10

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These examples is going to how to create a diff file with the differences between the original source directory and the patched directory. And how to patch the original source directory with the changes done in the patched directory.

Creating the diff file:

diff -Nuar source -orig/ source -patched/ > patch-file.diff

The patch is ‘applied’ using the ‘patch‘ command.
cd into the original directory (without the changes)

patch -p 1 < ../patch-file.diff

The ‘-p 1‘ option removes 1 path/directory from the top of the patch.

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Introduction
Me TV is a digital television (DVB) viewer for GNOME.

Me TV was developed for the modern digital lounge room with a PC for a media centre that is capable of normal PC tasks (web surfing, word processing and watching TV). It is not designed to be a full-blown media centre, such as MythTV, but will integrate well with the existing GNOME desktop.

Features currently include:

* Completely mouse driven
* Current and future program information
* Instant Record
* Double-click fullscreen
* DVB-T and DVB-C support
* Very simple installation and set up

Setup
First off you need to download and install Me TV 0.4.0 for Ubuntu 7.10:

wget https://launchpad.net/me-tv/stable/0.4/+download/me-tv_0.4.0_i386.deb

then cd to the directory were you saved the deb and type:

sudo dpkg -i me-tv_0.4.0_i386.deb

Now create ~/.me-tv/ if it does not already exist:

mkdir ~/.me-tv/

Now to install dvd-utils to get the TV channels:

sudo apt-get install dvb-utils

Once dvb utils is installed we need to scan for TV channels and this is how we do that:

scan /usr/share/doc/dvb-utils/examples/scan/dvb-t/au-Adelaide > ~/.me-tv/channels.conf

Note: You will have to ls the /usr/share/doc/dvb-utils/examples/scan/dvb-t/ directory for your location an substitute au-Adelaide for your location.

Final step now is to launch Me TV:

Applications –> Sound and Video –> Me TV

Screenshots of version 0.4.0

References
Official Me TV Home Page
Me TV Project Website
Linux TV Wiki
UHF Log-Periodic Array

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