Installing OSS on Daphile with minimal install components

Dave the Rave · n00b Joined: 25 Jan 2020 Posts: 7

Hi All,
I am working with Daphile music player which is packaged under Gentoo OS. Looking to activate my Lynx (two) soundcard which is supported by the OSS sound driver. Reading through the OSS install process, I require base-devel apparently to start-off

The Daphile based OS has the bare minimum and hence even the etc/portage directory was missing. Reading through posts I have run the commands below
However, I can't get the pacman command itself working which I believe comes with the base-devel package.
How do I get the basics installed - the last command below keeps giving me a circular dependency error?

emerge --sync
env-update
emerge-webrsync
cd /etc
mkdir portage
eselect profile list
eselect profile set 20
emerge --ask --verbose --update --deep --newuse @world

pjp · Administrator Joined: 16 Apr 2002 Posts: 20067

Moved from Desktop Environments to Unsupported Software since this isn't a Gentoo system.

If Daphile uses pacman, you may want to check with them on how package management is supposed to work. It could be a bad idea to run multiple package management systems.

With that caveat, there appears to be a pacman within Portage under sys-apps/pacman:

Jaglover · Posted: Sat Jan 25, 2020 11:49 pm Post subject:

Hold your horses, what OSS sound driver is it? Installing it may not require any portage function. Link to this driver, please. Documentation describing it would be useful, too.
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Dave the Rave · n00b Joined: 25 Jan 2020 Posts: 7

Thanks for the support.
Daphile unfortunately does not help on any back end changes.
I did run the command : emerge -s ^pacman$ and got that result - how do I install it

If not required, the OSS I am looking at is OSSv4. I could not find the link where I can copy the drivers.... can you provide that link please?

Thanks

Jaglover · Posted: Mon Jan 27, 2020 11:21 am Post subject:

Is see. Your Lynx is not supported by ALSA and you need low lever driver for your hardware. All you need is toolchain and kernel sources to complete it. OSSv4 does not support kernels higher than 4.x. What is the version of your kernel? It may be the easiest way is to build the kernel and OSSv4 driver in another Linux system and install it in your Daphile box.
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Dave the Rave · n00b Joined: 25 Jan 2020 Posts: 7

Thanks. Ran uname -r and got the followin
Linux 4.19.94-daphile-rt38 x86_64

Sorry for asking as a newbie but how do i get the driver compiled - command wise)?
Thx

Dave the Rave · n00b Joined: 25 Jan 2020 Posts: 7

Anyone wit some tips please?

Jaglover · Posted: Sat Feb 01, 2020 1:22 am Post subject:

As any other product OSS driver has instructions for end user. Did you unpack the archive and read the instructions? You can do all the building in some other machine, then pack the whole thing and unpack in your target box. You do not need any particular package manager for this. In theory it is ready to use when you load the kernel module, but it seems there are lots of tools to manage it, like mixer and whatnot.
Some things to consider. Can your playback application use OSS? I glanced over these driver docs and it seems to have some sort of ALSA emulation or compatibility layer. It may or may not work if your application requires ALSA. Furthermore, if you already have some ALSA device it may conflict with it. Not that I know anything about this driver, these are just the thoughts I had when I looked at the contents of archive. If I was you I'd install the same version of kernel in helper box and build against it, then take the kernel with all modules and other stuff and use it in target box. Experience tells kernel drivers work best if built with same toolchain as kernel. That's all I can say without actually attempting to build the driver.
OTOH, if you like building it in your target box then you can get all dependencies from here: http://packages.gentooexperimental.org/packages/ These can also be used without package manager if you wish. You need to verify/edit $PATH variable and run ldconfig if you simply unpack them by hand.
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Dave the Rave · n00b Joined: 25 Jan 2020 Posts: 7

Hi Watchman,
Thanks heaps. Sorry I am a newbie hence trying to understand the commands to complete what you suggested.
I read the OSS install instructions but it mentioned i need base-devel as pre-requisite. Base-devel needs pacman to install but I cant this command working.
I want to try anything...possible to share the commands I need to run. Thanks

Hu · Administrator Joined: 06 Mar 2007 Posts: 21724

Watchman is a title conferred to users whose post count is within a certain range. The user to whom you responded uses the handle Jaglover, not Watchman.

Jaglover · Posted: Sun Feb 02, 2020 12:54 pm Post subject:

We can generate ideas for you. Commands are the tools you use to work on your project, they are all yours.
Anyhow, I just noticed you have got emerge working, why you need pacman? It does not matter how you install your toolchain. Use binary packages from gentooexperimental.org to get working toolchain and then you can build whatever you want. Remember, install instructions are nothing more than a reference, no need to follow them blindly.

Another thought. Since this Daphile is dedicated audio server they really should offer at least some support for various hardware which may be used with it. Have you contacted them? You need kernel headers or sources matching your kernel version, it would be easiest to get it from Daphile folks.
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