For better or worse, I use Debian as my GNU/Linux distribution of choice.  More specifically, I use the testing distribution.  Typically, this distribution contains a steady stream of new packages and versions that will most likely make it into the next release.  Occasionally some broken packages make their way into the distribution, but not too often.

Unfortunately, bugs in the testing distribution seem to be adding up, at least for me.  Here's a couple:

ALSA pcsp (PC speaker) issues

Apparently the snd-pcsp module that's supposed to provide a method to output sound to the PC speaker was renamed to snd_pcsp, in the latest kernel release (2.6.30-1-686, at least).  The ALSA package normally blacklists the snd-pcsp module so it won't end up being the default output device.  Unfortunately, it hasn't been updated to the new naming scheme for the module, so the PC speaker might become the default output device.

This sucks for a couple reasons.  First, PC speaker output sucks - you almost never want to use this.  Second, removing the snd_pcsp module doesn't help, even if you restart or reset /etc/init.d/alsa-utils.  Annoying.

Luckily, there's an easy solution.  Just blacklist the module yourself, and reboot:

# echo "blacklist snd_pcsp" >> /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf
# shutdown -r now

Upon reboot, the system should be back to normal.  There's probably a way of doing this w/out a reboot, but I couldn't figure it out.  Removing all the relevant modules and restarting the ALSA subsystem didn't do the trick.

This is documented in Debian bug #522758.

fglrx is broken, again

We all know ATI video cards are terrible, and the drivers are almost as unstable as the San Andreas Fault.  Now, it sems, the fglrx-modules-2.6.30-1-686 (2.6.30+9-6-1) won't load at all on my IBM T42, after upgrading to linux-image-2.6.30-1-686 (2.6.30-6):

[   30.449441] fglrx: module license 'Proprietary. (C) 2002 - ATI Technologies, Starnberg, GERMANY' taints kernel.
[   30.449455] Disabling lock debugging due to kernel taint
[   30.543780] [fglrx] Maximum main memory to use for locked dma buffers: 1898 MBytes.
[   30.544230] [fglrx:drm_alloc] *ERROR* [driver] Allocating 0 bytes
[   30.544241] [fglrx:firegl_init_device_list] *ERROR* Out of memory when allocating device heads
[   30.544250] [fglrx:firegl_init_module] *ERROR* firegl_init_devices failed

No workaround.

Yeah, allocating 0 bytes probably won't work.  Fail.  This one's documented in Debian bug #538431.

A2DP is broken

I hate wires, so I use Bluetooth headphones to listen to music.  The bluez-audio (3.36-3) package has always worked for me.  My .asoundrc was nice and simple:

% cat .asoundrc 
pcm.bluetooth {
	type bluetooth
	device 00:0A:C9:24:16:98	# Backbeat 9xx
}

Unfortunately, when Debian upgraded all the bluez stuff to 4.42-2, they broke it.  Actually, they deprecated the bluez-audio package in favor of the bluez-alsa package, for some reason (I guess the name is better).

Now, MPlayer (or anything else) spits out errors and doesn't work anymore:

alsa-lib: pcm_bluetooth.c:1607:(audioservice_expect) BT_GET_CAPABILITIES failed : Input/output error(5)

Now, there are a couple profiles that can be used in the .asoundrc file for Bluetooth audio: audo, hifi, and voice.  voice is used for, well, voice - talking on a cellphone or similar.  hifi is the default, since if provides stereo Hi-Fi audio via A2DP.  auto selects whatever's best for the device, in my case it selects hifi.  But, the hifi profile doesn't work anymore, only the voice profile does (and it sounds terrible).

No workaround.

This is documented in Debian bug #532098.

If any of these things are important to you, don't upgrade the affected packages! At least, not yet.

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