hdaudio with Solaris 10 Update 5

[Jim Connors]

Hello,

Trying to get audio working on a Panasonic Toughbook cf-30 (rev F) laptop. Out of the box, Solaris 10 U5 apparently does not support some codec(s) supplied by the Intel 8301H (pci8086,284b).

ossinfo -v yields:

Version info: OSS 4.0 (b1015/200803241124) (0x00040003)
Platform: SunOS/i86pc 5.10 Generic_127128-11 (cf30)

Number of audio devices: 4
Number of audio engines: 12
Number of mixer devices: 1


Device objects
0: osscore0 OSS common devices
1: hdaudio0 Intel HD Audio interrupts=5570 (11140)
HD Audio controller Intel HD Audio
Vendor ID 0x8086284b
Subvendor ID 0x10f78338
Codec 0: Unknown (0x11d41884/0x10f70000)
Codec 1: Conexant2bfa (0x14f12bfa)
2: ossusb0 USB audio/MIDI device
3: vmix0 OSS transparent virtual mixer
4: sadasupport0 SADA compatibility layer


Mixer devices
0: High Definition Audio 0x11d41884
(Mixer 0 of device object 1)
Device file /dev/oss/hdaudio0/mix0, Legacy device /dev/mixer0
Priority: 10
Caps:

Audio devices
HD Audio pcm /dev/oss/hdaudio0/pcm0 (device index 0)
Legacy device /dev/dsp0
Caps: DUPLEX TRIGGER
Modes: IN/OUT
Out engine 1: Available for use
Engine 2: Available for use
Engine 3: Available for use
Engine 4: Available for use
Engine 5: Available for use
Engine 6: Available for use
Engine 7: Available for use
Engine 8: Available for use
Engine 9: Available for use
HD Audio pcm /dev/oss/hdaudio0/pcm1 (device index 1)
Legacy device /dev/dsp1
Caps: TRIGGER
Modes: OUTPUT
Out engine 1: Available for use
HD Audio modem-out /dev/oss/hdaudio0/pcm2 (device index 2)
Legacy device /dev/dsp2
Caps: TRIGGER
Modes: OUTPUT
Out engine 1: Available for use
High Definition Audio modem-in /dev/oss/hdaudio0/pcmin0 (device index 3)
Legacy device /dev/dsp3
Caps: DUPLEX TRIGGER
Modes: IN/OUT
In engine 1: Available for use
Engine 2: Available for use
Engine 3: Available for use
Engine 4: Available for use
Engine 5: Available for use
Engine 6: Available for use
Engine 7: Available for use
Engine 8: Available for use
Engine 9: Available for use

issuing 'osstest' produces output on the second device: /dev/oss/hdaudio0/pcm1 (audio engine 1): HD Audio pcm

My questions are:

1. The OSS documentation makes reference to an application called ossctl. It is not present in my downloaded package (oss-solaris-v4.0-1015-i386.pkg). Is this available?

2. What's required to make Solaris think that /dev/oss/hdaudio0/pcm1 is the default audio device, so that applications like the volume control applet and CD player work seamlessly.

Thanks,
-- Jim C

[cesium]

1. ossctl was removed on build 1008. Alas, The documentation is a bit outdated. If I could find a decent pdf editor, I'd fix it myself.

Anyway, The method for changing the default soundcard is described here, but I'm not sure it is neccesary in your case. (From the ossinfo I gather that /dev/oss/hdaudio0/pcm0 is used as /dev/dsp. Why do you want to change it to pcm1? Is pcm0 unable to output sound (e.g. in osstest)?)

2. OSS has a sadasupport module (see "man sadasupport") which can emulate Solaris' sound API, making most apps work as is.

In order to use OSS directly, apps will need to be reconfigured. This may not be possible if apps were compiled with OSS support disabled, which I suspect is the case for some packages (You may wish to use SFE to recompile them).

The mixer support is a bit of a special case (This part of SADA isn't completely emulated) - I suggest you use ossxmix (or recompile Gnome, but this will require either a GStreamer patch, or gst-plugins-bad 0.10.7 - see above link).