Compared with the situation a year or two ago, installing ALSA is becoming quite easy, partly thanks to a nice explanation in /usr/share/doc/alsa-source/README.Debian.gz of how to build to match a kernel-image. Both alsa-source and kernel-patch-*-powerpc are in quite good shape! But I had some troubles that seem unnecessary, and maybe we can make the whole thing quite a bit easier. (Note that I used 2.4.22-6 versions, so maybe I'll get slapped if any of the following points is already fixed in 2.4.22-7.)
First, there are different flavours of kernel-image at ftp://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/pool/main/k/kernel-patch-2.4.22-powerpc. The package information is quite vague about how the images differ. My particular problem was, with a beige G3, do I want the "powerpc-pmac" flavour, or just the generic "powerpc"? The package information is vague, and gave me no idea where to look. And how am I supposed to decide whether to use a "small" flavour? My hope is that some response to this mail will help me file a useful bug report against kernel-patch-*-powerpc... Second, my first try at installing ALSA ran into a problem, helpfully pointed out by insmod, that I was using a gcc of inappropriate vintage compared to the kernel image. Running "dpkg-deb --info" does not tell what gcc version was used to compile a package. How was I supposed to know? Should the info for a kernel-image package state what gcc version was used to compile it? If this is a bug, whose is it?? Third, when I let the debian/rules from the alsa-source package guess the kernel version, it guessed "KVERS=2.4.22", resulting in modules being install in /lib/modules/2.4.22/alsa/ rather than the correct /lib/modules/2.4.22-powerpc/alsa/. This presumably is a bug either in alsa-source or in kernel-patch-*-powerpc, but which?? Regards, -- John
