How to update alsa driver manually [resolved]

[Nigel Henry]

On Thursday 11 October 2007 08:57, antonio montagnani wrote:
> 2007/10/11, Ric Moore <wayward4now at gmail.com>:
> > On Wed, 2007-10-10 at 21:48 +0200, Nigel Henry wrote:
> > > I've had no need to update manually the alsa driver as the soundcard on
> > > my 2 machines works fine, but for the sake of experience I want to know
> > > how to upgrade an alsa driver for my current kernel on Fedora7.
> > >
> > > My latest kernel is 2.6.22.9-91.fc7, and I have the kernel headers for
> > > this kernel.
> >
> > I didn't think that alsa was kernel dependent? Just yum -y update alsa*
> > I would think. YMMV, Ric

> Nigel wants to download drivers from alsa website, so they have to be
> re-compiled and installed on every different kernel you wish to run
>
> --
> Antonio Montagnani
> Skype : antoniomontag

Problem resolved. I didn't go the mercurial way, but with help from Fernando 
at planetccrma, and folks on the alsa user list, it proved to be an 
unbelievably easy procedure. Details below for anyone that might read this 
thread.

Using the latest installed kernel, which also has the kernel-headers package 
for it installed.
Install the kernel-devel package for the same kernel.
Download the latest development version of the alsa driver from:
http://alsa-project.org

cd to where you put the downloaded alsa driver, then as user.
./configure
followed by, if configure goes ok.
make
su to root, and then.
make install

Make install also runs depmod -a so there should be no need to run it again.

Reboot into the same kernel, and check if you now have the new alsa driver 
with.
cat /proc/asound/version

This procedure above assumes that you didn't already have kernel-devel 
installed for a previous kernel. Untried by me, but if you have more than one 
kernel-devel package installed, you need to pass an option to configure.

./configure --with-kernel=<kernel-directory>
Where <kernel-directory> is the name of the directory for the kernel that you 
want to upgrade the driver to in /usr/src/kernels (I don't think you have to 
specify the full path, as configure should look in /usr/src/kernels anyway).

And as has been said, the same procedure will have to be repeated for each 
newer kernel installed, along with it's kernel-headers, and you will have to 
install the kernel-devel package for your latest kernel before proceeding.

I hope I havn't missed anything, but it's worth having a read at the INSTALL 
file in the driver tarball. For example on earlier versions of FC, 
particularly if you have planetccrma installed, there is an alsa start 
script, and you can set configure options to avoid this being replaced.

All the best, and thanks to all who have helped.

Nigel.