wrong soundcard

[Ganelon]

It's really a minor issue, but for some reason Oolite likes to insist on using my second soundcard rather than the on-the-motherboard card that is set as system default. I'm currently running Ubuntu Karmic Koala.

I usually just physically change the plug when I go to play Oolite, but if anybody happens to know some command line option or config setting or whatever to direct Oolite to a specific soundcard, it would be nice.

[Getafix]

Hi Ganelon,

it seems there is an SDL environment variable that can be used on that matter. I quote from libsdl.org.

Code: Select all

AUDIODEV

    The audio device to use, if SDL_PATH_DSP isn't set.

...

SDL_PATH_DSP

    The audio device to use. If not set, SDL tries AUDIODEV and then a platform-dependent default value (/dev/audio on Solaris, /dev/dsp on Linux etc).

I suspect that you could force the use of a device by setting the SDL_PATH_DSP variable.


Make sure the speakers are connected to the preferred sound-card and the linux audio is functional.

For starters get all the available dsp devices:
Example:

Code: Select all

$ ls /dev/dsp*
/dev/dsp
/dev/dsp1
$ 

Then locate the oolite executable script:
Example

Code: Select all

$ which oolite
/usr/bin/oolite
$ 

Then backup this script:
Example:

Code: Select all

$ sudo cp -p /usr/bin/oolite /usr/bin/oolite.original
$ 

Now recreate the oolite script by adding the SDL environment variable definition:
Example:

Code: Select all

$ sudo bash
# echo "export SDL_PATH_DSP=/dev/dsp" > /usr/bin/oolite
# cat /usr/bin/oolite.original >> /usr/bin/oolite
# exit
$ 

Execute oolite. If you don't get audio, then execute this last chunk of code again
by altering /dev/dsp to the second device /dev/dsp1.

If this approach did not work, then rollback to your original oolite script.
Example:

Code: Select all

$ sudo mv /usr/bin/oolite.original /usr/bin/oolite
$ 

[JensAyton]

As a side note, if SDL is not defaulting to the system default, that would appear to be an SDL bug and should be reported to them.