Hi all,
First time post. I will do my best to fix any errors in location/syntax I may make.
I'm a long-time desktop user but am now just getting into the excitement of tinkering with my systems. For a long time I've been satisfied with a "good-enough" VLC + Alsa config to my Schiit Bifrost DAC. It was familiar, and it was VERY easy. Lately I've been wanting to get further away from anything Linux if I can, (classic sysd refugee from the debian forced adoption). I've been excited about learning more about OSS because of the freedom and apparent sound quality audiophiles like.
OS is 13.3 REL. I am working on my upgrades on my tester boxes. This is just an SFF machine that is a media streamer to my DAC. It's Base + Xorg + FVWM + VLC + OSS -> Schiit DAC, front USB port, no HUB. Alsa was never installed on this system, only on older boxes pre-wipe.
In pre-coffe frustration this morning, just wanting to play some flac files whilst brewing, all logic went out the window. I hotplugged my USB DAC and started getting "bad file descriptors" related to the device (pcm3) when I started issuing mixer commands. Normally I have the patience to reboot when I can't seem to actually get the stream to work again (despite a seemingly-successful restart of mixer service).
This morning I got cranky and out of frustration, deleted the /dev/mixer3 (probably some sort of special file), and BAM, I did some fast corruption!
I'm learning it's not as simple as copying a file over and hoping it works. As a noob, it's obvious that this is above my head, and these are probably some sort of special "file". I would be a bit more apt to troubleshoot but I can't cat those files, so I am a bit lost.
Back in 2000, when I was a Windows admin, the soultion would have been a reinstall of the app/svc/whatever. I'm happy to reinstall the pkg or build whatever version from ports/git. But in the spirit of UNIX learning, I'd like to try to learn a bit more about what I did wrong here and what I can do to try to fix this.
Is there a way to recreate/generate a skel version of one of those /dev/mixer# files. Should I even be thinking about this at the "file-level"?
I can adapt my behavior to simply not hotpulg the USB dac in the future (to avoid the initial annoying "bad file descriptor" irk). But in terms of thinking, is this a "bug"? Should I simply not be hotplugging while a stream is open from VLC? Can I script something to either set a timer for the USB polling (to give me like 5-10 seconds between USB swaps)?
I can't seem to find anything in OSS related to timeouts or anything, but I am continuing to look.
Thank you in advance!
Jess
First time post. I will do my best to fix any errors in location/syntax I may make.
I'm a long-time desktop user but am now just getting into the excitement of tinkering with my systems. For a long time I've been satisfied with a "good-enough" VLC + Alsa config to my Schiit Bifrost DAC. It was familiar, and it was VERY easy. Lately I've been wanting to get further away from anything Linux if I can, (classic sysd refugee from the debian forced adoption). I've been excited about learning more about OSS because of the freedom and apparent sound quality audiophiles like.
OS is 13.3 REL. I am working on my upgrades on my tester boxes. This is just an SFF machine that is a media streamer to my DAC. It's Base + Xorg + FVWM + VLC + OSS -> Schiit DAC, front USB port, no HUB. Alsa was never installed on this system, only on older boxes pre-wipe.
In pre-coffe frustration this morning, just wanting to play some flac files whilst brewing, all logic went out the window. I hotplugged my USB DAC and started getting "bad file descriptors" related to the device (pcm3) when I started issuing mixer commands. Normally I have the patience to reboot when I can't seem to actually get the stream to work again (despite a seemingly-successful restart of mixer service).
This morning I got cranky and out of frustration, deleted the /dev/mixer3 (probably some sort of special file), and BAM, I did some fast corruption!
I'm learning it's not as simple as copying a file over and hoping it works. As a noob, it's obvious that this is above my head, and these are probably some sort of special "file". I would be a bit more apt to troubleshoot but I can't cat those files, so I am a bit lost.Back in 2000, when I was a Windows admin, the soultion would have been a reinstall of the app/svc/whatever. I'm happy to reinstall the pkg or build whatever version from ports/git. But in the spirit of UNIX learning, I'd like to try to learn a bit more about what I did wrong here and what I can do to try to fix this.
Is there a way to recreate/generate a skel version of one of those /dev/mixer# files. Should I even be thinking about this at the "file-level"?
I can adapt my behavior to simply not hotpulg the USB dac in the future (to avoid the initial annoying "bad file descriptor" irk). But in terms of thinking, is this a "bug"? Should I simply not be hotplugging while a stream is open from VLC? Can I script something to either set a timer for the USB polling (to give me like 5-10 seconds between USB swaps)?
I can't seem to find anything in OSS related to timeouts or anything, but I am continuing to look.
Thank you in advance!
Jess
