I should probably be posting this to the Steam forums, but most of the denizens there are Windows people so I might be better off letting you Debian gurus have a go at it first.
TL;DR: Copying an existing /home into a fresh Debian installation causes audio in Steam games to glitch - but all other sound is OK. Full description: I have a machine in the living room that stores MP3s and videos and serves them to other machines on our network as well as playing them locally on our TV's big screen. I also play a few Steam games (e.g. Portal) on it. It's a 2007-vintage machine, but it has 8GB of RAM and enough CPU power to do the job, and runs the latest version of Bookworm. Recently I decided to upgrade its storage capacity, and replaced its 500GB hard drive (which was pretty large at the time I bought it) with a 4TB drive. I did an install from scratch using a network install CD, then copied my /home partition (using rsync) from the old drive. Everything works great with one exception: when I fire up Portal the sound gets glitches about once a second. This only happens with Steam games; I can play MP3s and videos with mpv and the sound is perfect, as it is when watching YouTube videos. If I swap the old drive back in everything is fine. Obviously my Steam programs and configuration files are in my home directory, since the updated system comes up icons and all without re-installing Steam, and can find everything it needs to run the games. But perhaps there are a few files somewhere else (/usr?) containing information critical to audio for Steam. Any ideas? (Side question: is this an acceptable way to upgrade a hard drive?) -- /~\ Charlie Gibbs | Life is perverse. \ / <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> | It can be beautiful - X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | but it won't. / \ if you read it the right way. | -- Lily Tomlin
