Am I right to think that F10 is in a bad way when it comes to music production?
Reading around, it sounds like good things nearly happened, and the whole of CCRMA nearly made it into this new Fedora Unity thing.
On the face of it, that'd be great, and I could install my RT kernel, FFADO, Jackd, and Hydrogen/Ardour easily.
It sounds like the RT patches aren't maintained though, is this right? This pretty much shafts the whole of music production on Linux doesn't it? Won't new versions of Ubuntu and everything else be screwed over by this?
I'm feeling really let down by this. I can go back to F9, but what a faff. I thought if I waited a while after release, all would be well. And what about when F9 stops getting security updates?
Any news on the state of play, and whether its likely to change would be great.
Ta,
Gaz
On Mon, 2009-01-19 at 12:16 +0000, earthworm@planetearthworm.com wrote:
Am I right to think that F10 is in a bad way when it comes to music production?
Not any more than fc9, I think.
Reading around, it sounds like good things nearly happened, and the whole of CCRMA nearly made it into this new Fedora Unity thing.
Uh? First I hear about this... Unity?
On the face of it, that'd be great, and I could install my RT kernel, FFADO, Jackd, and Hydrogen/Ardour easily.
They all install fine from Planet CCRMA / Fedora for fc10 (but see below). With the Planet CCRMA kernel and fc10 I got an edirol fa-101 to work fine.
Sigh. Firewire. Fedora. Sigh. Faado will only work with the Planet CCRMA kernel because the Fedora kernel still insists in shipping with the new stack only. Read this, written on Dec 2008:
http://ieee1394.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Juju_Migration
From that page:
"Don't use the new drivers in Linux kernel versions older than 2.6.27.5. They are too buggy.
Regarding Linux 2.6.27.5 and later, the best advice to Linux distributors (kernel packagers) as well as to regular users is: Either build only the old IEEE 1394 drivers, or build both stacks as modules but make sure that only one of them (the one you want) is being loaded. I.e. create proper blacklist entries in /etc/modprobe.conf; see below. Also, you need to upgrade your userland to libraw1394 v2 if you want to switch to the new drivers (or freely between old and new drivers)."
Of course Fedora broke this a long long time ago. Fc7, I think. It is now fc10 and audio firewire support is still broken. By now any users needing firewire audio with Planet CCRMA have probably migrated away to better lands, so who cares anyway. At least libraw1394 is now 2.x and it can work transparently with both stacks (even more hacks were needed before fc10).
It sounds like the RT patches aren't maintained though, is this right?
Yes and no. There are two "official" patches for 2.6.24.x and 2.6.26.x kernels. The former is the most stable but too old a kernel to actually work with fc9 and fc10 (X dies). And there are no patches for 2.6.27.x and beyond. Work is underway (AFAIK) on a new rt tree so we may see a new set of patches in the 2.6.28.x timeframe. In the meanwhile 2.6.26.x has seen a few crucial fixes happen recently, most notably a fix for the long standing broken midi i/o. There are still issues and I have seen it lock hard.
Hope this helps clarify the situation. -- Fernando
This pretty much shafts the whole of music production on Linux doesn't it? Won't new versions of Ubuntu and everything else be screwed over by this?
I'm feeling really let down by this. I can go back to F9, but what a faff. I thought if I waited a while after release, all would be well. And what about when F9 stops getting security updates?
Any news on the state of play, and whether its likely to change would be great.
On Wednesday 21 January 2009 14:45:27 Fernando Lopez-Lezcano wrote:
Sigh. Firewire. Fedora. Sigh. Faado will only work with the Planet CCRMA kernel because the Fedora kernel still insists in shipping with the new stack only
The new stack beats the pants off the old one in pretty much every single area except this one. In a pinch, you can replaced *just* the firewire drivers in the Fedora kernel w/o having to use an entirely different kernel.
Note that as of 2.6.30, I believe ffado should work just fine with the new firewire stack (based on a discussion I vaguely recall on the linux1394 mailing list). Quite a bit of work has gone into libraw1394, libiec61883 and the firewire drivers in the past month.
On Wed, 2009-01-21 at 15:18 -0500, Jarod Wilson wrote:
On Wednesday 21 January 2009 14:45:27 Fernando Lopez-Lezcano wrote:
Sigh. Firewire. Fedora. Sigh. Faado will only work with the Planet CCRMA kernel because the Fedora kernel still insists in shipping with the new stack only
The new stack beats the pants off the old one in pretty much every single area except this one.
Very irrelevant for firewire audio interface users.
In any particular distribution there is always a tradeoff between having the latest shiny stuff and having it also work (ie: how bleeding edge is the combination of packages and capabilities that make up a distro).
I don't think I have seen many cases (well, any) where a distro bricks a whole class of hardware devices (ie: they were working before the "upgrade" and they don't work after the "upgrade") and does not fix it. Even after users complain. Specially if all those devices remain useless bricks for several releases. The message is clear, I got it: if you want working firewire audio devices go somewhere else[*]. Or hack your system in several unsupportable ways. I tried doing that for quite a while for Planet CCRMA, eventually gave up.
Actually, I'd be surprised if there were _any_ audio users left using Fedora and Planet CCRMA that need to use firewire audio interfaces. They probably left a long time ago. Because you see, it did not work and it does not work, and that _is_ important. For those users, the performance and advantages of the new stack are NIL.
In a pinch, you can replaced *just* the firewire drivers in the Fedora kernel w/o having to use an entirely different kernel.
Sigh.
I'm not replacing the kernel because the firewire drivers are not working. I am replacing the kernel because I need a low latency kernel for critical audio work, and Fedora does not and will not provide that. As a side effect firewire audio devices work. And that is possible without further ugly hacks because fc10 includes libraw1394 2.x. Before, for a long time, the hacks multiplied (incompatible libraries to begin with!!! - meaning it is not possible to boot into the two different stacks!).
"In a pinch" Fedora should have provided that from the beginning. If it could not it should have delayed the release till _now_, when we are _beginning_ to see a stack and libraries stable enough for use with the juju broken hardware (and specially libraries that can deal with both stacks - those appeared only in fc10). And Fedora could/should have provided a migration path.
This has been beaten to death many times before, I don't know why I'm bothering to write this response.
Note that as of 2.6.30, I believe ffado should work just fine with the new firewire stack (based on a discussion I vaguely recall on the linux1394 mailing list). Quite a bit of work has gone into libraw1394, libiec61883 and the firewire drivers in the past month.
Maybe it will work. Maybe not. But right now and for the past 3 releases it has not worked. Sure, eventually it will work. And it will be fantastic. But there will be nobody left to use them in the Fedora world except for new users (till _they_ get burned by who knows what new interesting future idea of progress...).
How many _years_ would _you_ wait for a solution if a distro willingly bricked a device you needed?
Sorry, I appreciate the work you put into this, just don't tell me how good is something that is actually useless for me.
-- Fernando
[*] Look, I'm still around because I do not currently _depend_ on firewire devices for my machines (look up CCRMA, around 50 linux high performance fanless audio workstations running Fedora plus the associated servers, etc, etc). If I did, I probably would have migrated away a long time ago. And to tell the truth I will stay around only while the pain associated with staying is lower than the pain associated with a migration, and lately the pain gap seems to be getting smaller (and also because I know that the grass is not always greener somewhere else... but you know, sometimes it actually is).
On Wed, Jan 21, 2009 at 10:12 PM, Fernando Lopez-Lezcano nando@ccrma.stanford.edu wrote:
Actually, I'd be surprised if there were _any_ audio users left using Fedora and Planet CCRMA that need to use firewire audio interfaces. They probably left a long time ago. Because you see, it did not work and it does not work, and that _is_ important. For those users, the performance and advantages of the new stack are NIL.
Unfortunately (for me at least) you can count me as one of them. I miss enjoying the fruits of Fernado's work a lot since he provides exactly the tools I'm interested in using, but Fedora became useless and remains to be like that to me because: 1) I have a firewire device, and 2) The latest RT kernel locks up a lot. For now I'll stick to OpenSuse 11.0 which seems to be performing quite well although the package maintenance is a little bit messy and I have to build my own pd-extended (sigh!).
Hope things get better.
Hector
Hi,
When I use the CCRMA kernel, the mouse pointer seems to move at half the speed and I can't use two finger tap for right click as I can on the normal kernel (I had to edit a HAL file for this [1]).
Does anyone know why this might be? Does the CCRMA driver cause a different mouse driver to be used or something?
Thanks for any help,
Gaz
[1] http://www.cenolan.com/2008/11/installing-fedora-10-macbook/#toc-fixing-the-...
On Wed, 2009-01-21 at 22:47 -0500, Hector Centeno wrote:
On Wed, Jan 21, 2009 at 10:12 PM, Fernando Lopez-Lezcano nando@ccrma.stanford.edu wrote:
Actually, I'd be surprised if there were _any_ audio users left using Fedora and Planet CCRMA that need to use firewire audio interfaces. They probably left a long time ago. Because you see, it did not work and it does not work, and that _is_ important. For those users, the performance and advantages of the new stack are NIL.
Unfortunately (for me at least) you can count me as one of them. I miss enjoying the fruits of Fernado's work a lot since he provides exactly the tools I'm interested in using, but Fedora became useless and remains to be like that to me because: 1) I have a firewire device, and 2) The latest RT kernel locks up a lot. For now I'll stick to OpenSuse 11.0 which seems to be performing quite well although the package maintenance is a little bit messy and I have to build my own pd-extended (sigh!).
Hope things get better.
Hector
Fedora-music-list mailing list Fedora-music-list@redhat.com http://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-music-list
On Wed, 2009-03-04 at 22:19 +0000, Gareth Foster wrote:
Hi,
When I use the CCRMA kernel, the mouse pointer seems to move at half the speed and I can't use two finger tap for right click as I can on the normal kernel (I had to edit a HAL file for this [1]).
Which rt kernel are you booting and which version of Fedora?
I've seen I think one report of something similar but it has not happened to me on the machines I have tested. Not much I can do really.
Does anyone know why this might be? Does the CCRMA driver cause a different mouse driver to be used or something?
Probably not. The configuration files for building the rt kernels are derived from the ones for the Fedora kernels so driver choice should be (I imagine) similar.
Smells like a bug in the rt patch...
-- Fernando
[1] http://www.cenolan.com/2008/11/installing-fedora-10-macbook/#toc-fixing-the-...
On Wed, 2009-01-21 at 22:47 -0500, Hector Centeno wrote:
On Wed, Jan 21, 2009 at 10:12 PM, Fernando Lopez-Lezcano nando@ccrma.stanford.edu wrote:
Actually, I'd be surprised if there were _any_ audio users left using Fedora and Planet CCRMA that need to use firewire audio interfaces. They probably left a long time ago. Because you see, it did not work and it does not work, and that _is_ important. For those users, the performance and advantages of the new stack are NIL.
Unfortunately (for me at least) you can count me as one of them. I miss enjoying the fruits of Fernado's work a lot since he provides exactly the tools I'm interested in using, but Fedora became useless and remains to be like that to me because: 1) I have a firewire device, and 2) The latest RT kernel locks up a lot. For now I'll stick to OpenSuse 11.0 which seems to be performing quite well although the package maintenance is a little bit messy and I have to build my own pd-extended (sigh!).
Hope things get better.
Hector
On Wed, 2009-03-04 at 20:26 -0800, Fernando Lopez-Lezcano wrote:
Which rt kernel are you booting and which version of Fedora?
Fedora 10, 2.6.26.8-1.rt16.1.fc10.ccrma.x86_64.rt.
Smells like a bug in the rt patch...
Where do I go to report that?
Ta for the help mate!
Gaz
On Thu, 2009-03-05 at 19:47 +0000, Gareth Foster wrote:
On Wed, 2009-03-04 at 20:26 -0800, Fernando Lopez-Lezcano wrote:
Which rt kernel are you booting and which version of Fedora?
Fedora 10, 2.6.26.8-1.rt16.1.fc10.ccrma.x86_64.rt.
You _could_ be riskier and try the very experimental 2.6.29 rc6 rt3 based kernel. You have to enable the fc10 Planet CCRMA "testing" repository to get it (see the Planet CCRMA web page). I have run it successfully but others have reported problems (as would be expected).
Smells like a bug in the rt patch...
Where do I go to report that?
That would probably be the Linux Kernel Mailing List, with a cc to Thomas Gleixner <tglx __At__ linutronix.de> and Ingo Molnar <mingo __aT__ elte.hu>. It probably would be useful only if there are relevant messages in the output of dmesg or in /var/log/messages
Ta for the help mate!
No problem... -- Fernando
On Thu, 2009-03-05 at 13:27 -0800, Fernando Lopez-Lezcano wrote:
You _could_ be riskier and try the very experimental 2.6.29 rc6 rt3 based kernel. You have to enable the fc10 Planet CCRMA "testing" repository to get it (see the Planet CCRMA web page). I have run it successfully but others have reported problems (as would be expected).
It gets as far as logging in, the locks up with a white screen and a mouse pointer :(
That would probably be the Linux Kernel Mailing List, with a cc to Thomas Gleixner <tglx __At__ linutronix.de> and Ingo Molnar <mingo __aT__ elte.hu>. It probably would be useful only if there are relevant messages in the output of dmesg or in /var/log/messages
I'm not sure I'd know what was relevant ...
On Wednesday 21 January 2009 22:12:45 Fernando Lopez-Lezcano wrote:
On Wed, 2009-01-21 at 15:18 -0500, Jarod Wilson wrote:
On Wednesday 21 January 2009 14:45:27 Fernando Lopez-Lezcano wrote:
Sigh. Firewire. Fedora. Sigh. Faado will only work with the Planet CCRMA kernel because the Fedora kernel still insists in shipping with the new stack only
The new stack beats the pants off the old one in pretty much every single area except this one.
Very irrelevant for firewire audio interface users.
No, I know. I misread your mail slightly, didn't catch the "only" at the end of "new stack only", I read it as "insists on shipping with the new stack".
In a pinch, you can replaced *just* the firewire drivers in the Fedora kernel w/o having to use an entirely different kernel.
Sigh.
I'm not replacing the kernel because the firewire drivers are not working. I am replacing the kernel because I need a low latency kernel for critical audio work, and Fedora does not and will not provide that. As a side effect firewire audio devices work.
Right, sorry, forgot about that part. I know next to nothing about firewire audio devices, probably should just keep quiet. ;) I do have an ffado mixer working w/a basic m-audio device (or so it seems), but that's about as much as I've done on this front...
And that is possible without further ugly hacks because fc10 includes libraw1394 2.x. Before, for a long time, the hacks multiplied (incompatible libraries to begin with!!! - meaning it is not possible to boot into the two different stacks!).
I could have sworn there was an F9 dual-mode libraw1394, but yeah, it seems F10 is the first Fedora w/it. :\
"In a pinch" Fedora should have provided that from the beginning. If it could not it should have delayed the release till _now_, when we are _beginning_ to see a stack and libraries stable enough for use with the juju broken hardware (and specially libraries that can deal with both stacks - those appeared only in fc10). And Fedora could/should have provided a migration path.
Yeah, we kinda botched it badly all over the place -- both in Fedora and in assorted upstream places. Shipping both stacks for a while with dual-mode libs would have been a much better approach. I didn't realize myself just how screwy things were until they'd already been done (F8 time frame), but at the same time, probably should have tried to do more about it when I did. Unfortunately, the bulk of my day job isn't focused on firewire, I do most firewire stuff on my own time.
This has been beaten to death many times before, I don't know why I'm bothering to write this response.
Apologies for striking a nerve.
Note that as of 2.6.30, I believe ffado should work just fine with the new firewire stack (based on a discussion I vaguely recall on the linux1394 mailing list). Quite a bit of work has gone into libraw1394, libiec61883 and the firewire drivers in the past month.
Maybe it will work. Maybe not. But right now and for the past 3 releases it has not worked. Sure, eventually it will work. And it will be fantastic. But there will be nobody left to use them in the Fedora world except for new users (till _they_ get burned by who knows what new interesting future idea of progress...).
How many _years_ would _you_ wait for a solution if a distro willingly bricked a device you needed?
Sorry, I appreciate the work you put into this, just don't tell me how good is something that is actually useless for me.
Point taken, and I do hear you. MythTV with FireWire cable boxes didn't work at all w/the new stack until I finally had some free time to really dig into *why* it didn't work and author the necessary fixes myself. Since I wasn't actually depending on my cable box to record stuff, and users who *were* depending on their cable boxes could still get the old drivers, the problem languished for way longer than it should have. The bulk of attention given to the new stack was on the storage side, mostly because that's the primary use case for RHEL. So that side has been rock-solid and performs outstandingly, but the less common use cases have indeed suffered mightily, and unfortunately, most of the folks with the expertise to get the loose ends tied up have been tied up with other things... :(
So yeah. We (Fedora) botched this transition pretty badly. I'm hopeful that we'll finally have everything that worked in the old stack working with the new stack by F11 (in addition to all the things it does better).
[*] Look, I'm still around because I do not currently _depend_ on firewire devices for my machines (look up CCRMA, around 50 linux high performance fanless audio workstations running Fedora plus the associated servers, etc, etc). If I did, I probably would have migrated away a long time ago. And to tell the truth I will stay around only while the pain associated with staying is lower than the pain associated with a migration, and lately the pain gap seems to be getting smaller (and also because I know that the grass is not always greener somewhere else... but you know, sometimes it actually is).
Here's hoping we can continue minimizing the pain gap!
On Wed, 2009-01-21 at 11:45 -0800, Fernando Lopez-Lezcano wrote:
Uh? First I hear about this... Unity?
Oops, I meant this http://rpmfusion.org/
Has CCRMA merged into that?
"Don't use the new drivers in Linux kernel versions older than 2.6.27.5. They are too buggy.
I've heard all about that from the FFADO bloke. He wasn't amused either.
Yes and no. There are two "official" patches for 2.6.24.x and 2.6.26.x kernels. The former is the most stable but too old a kernel to actually work with fc9 and fc10 (X dies). And there are no patches for 2.6.27.x
Sigh. Sounds like I've no choice but to use the one that locks up all the time.
I think its great you're kicking up a fuss anyway Fernando, making music on Fedora could be a real selling point for the distro. Its something we can do really well, even compared to Windows, Ardour and the like are great tools. And look at the support FFADO is getting from hardware makers! That never happens in Linux!
I think it'd be great if CCRMA was in fusion. If the RT kernel was in there too. If all the kernel modules were built for this too, that'd be a bonus.
Thanks again for all the info. I've not been driven away from Fedora and CCRMA just yet :)
Ta,
Gaz
On Thu, 2009-01-22 at 20:08 +0000, Gareth Foster wrote:
On Wed, 2009-01-21 at 11:45 -0800, Fernando Lopez-Lezcano wrote:
Uh? First I hear about this... Unity?
Oops, I meant this http://rpmfusion.org/ Has CCRMA merged into that?
Nope.
"Don't use the new drivers in Linux kernel versions older than 2.6.27.5. They are too buggy.
I've heard all about that from the FFADO bloke. He wasn't amused either.
Yes and no. There are two "official" patches for 2.6.24.x and 2.6.26.x kernels. The former is the most stable but too old a kernel to actually work with fc9 and fc10 (X dies). And there are no patches for 2.6.27.x
Sigh. Sounds like I've no choice but to use the one that locks up all the time.
You should give the latest one I released a try. Maybe it will lock less frequently, it has a couple of fixes for BUG warnings :-) That would be 2.6.26.8-1.rt13.4... It all depends on your usage patterns and your hardware, it might be also an option to run the Fedora kernel.
Hopefully we will have a better rt patch in the 2.6.28 timeframe, but I have not heard anything (loud) yet.
-- Fernando
I think its great you're kicking up a fuss anyway Fernando, making music on Fedora could be a real selling point for the distro. Its something we can do really well, even compared to Windows, Ardour and the like are great tools. And look at the support FFADO is getting from hardware makers! That never happens in Linux!
I think it'd be great if CCRMA was in fusion. If the RT kernel was in there too. If all the kernel modules were built for this too, that'd be a bonus.
Thanks again for all the info. I've not been driven away from Fedora and CCRMA just yet :)
On Thu, 2009-01-22 at 17:37 -0800, Fernando Lopez-Lezcano wrote:
You should give the latest one I released a try. Maybe it will lock less frequently, it has a couple of fixes for BUG warnings :-) That would be 2.6.26.8-1.rt13.4... It all depends on your usage patterns and your hardware, it might be also an option to run the Fedora kernel.
Hopefully we will have a better rt patch in the 2.6.28 timeframe, but I have not heard anything (loud) yet.
I installed and tried 2.6.26.8-1.rt15.1.fc10. It boots, and seems to work. I did notice that my Macbook Pro starts making more noise running this kernel ...
Anyway, I need to get ndiswrapper sorted for my wireless. Should I be able to use akmod for this does anyone know? I've installed it, and it works for the stock kernel, but doesn't for the RT kernel. I could build it myself, but that means rebuilding every time there's a ndiswrapper or RT kernel release.
Ta for any help,
Gaz
On Thu, 2009-02-05 at 12:22 +0000, Gareth Foster wrote:
On Thu, 2009-01-22 at 17:37 -0800, Fernando Lopez-Lezcano wrote:
You should give the latest one I released a try. Maybe it will lock less frequently, it has a couple of fixes for BUG warnings :-) That would be 2.6.26.8-1.rt13.4... It all depends on your usage patterns and your hardware, it might be also an option to run the Fedora kernel.
Hopefully we will have a better rt patch in the 2.6.28 timeframe, but I have not heard anything (loud) yet.
I installed and tried 2.6.26.8-1.rt15.1.fc10. It boots, and seems to work. I did notice that my Macbook Pro starts making more noise running this kernel ...
Anyway, I need to get ndiswrapper sorted for my wireless. Should I be able to use akmod for this does anyone know? I've installed it, and it works for the stock kernel, but doesn't for the RT kernel. I could build it myself, but that means rebuilding every time there's a ndiswrapper or RT kernel release.
You probably need to edit a file somewhere (yeah, that's helpful!) to add "rt" and "rtPAE" as kernel "extension" names... probably not included in the set of kernel names it knows about (I had to do that for kmod in kmodtools for a different kernel module).
-- Fernando
On Thu, 2009-02-05 at 12:40 -0800, Fernando Lopez-Lezcano wrote:
You probably need to edit a file somewhere (yeah, that's helpful!) to add "rt" and "rtPAE" as kernel "extension" names... probably not included in the set of kernel names it knows about (I had to do that for kmod in kmodtools for a different kernel module).
Hmm, it magically started working. I think rebooting a lot helped. Oh ... and installing the source for the RT kernel.
So, I presume people can do this for NVIDIA drivers and all sorts now. Nice and easy compared to before!
Also, jack works with FFADO and my Focusrite card straight away, easy. In bad news, the fonts in Ardour have gone HUGE. Doing bug reports ...
-
Fernando Lopez-Lezcano -
Gareth Foster -
Hector Centeno -
Jarod Wilson