Documentation/sound/alsa-configuration.rst
Source file repositories/reference/linux-study-clean/Documentation/sound/alsa-configuration.rst
File Facts
- System
- Linux kernel
- Corpus path
Documentation/sound/alsa-configuration.rst- Extension
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- 2863
- Domain
- Support Tooling And Documentation
- Bucket
- Documentation
- Inferred role
- Support Tooling And Documentation: documentation
- Status
- atlas-only
Why This File Exists
Repository support layer: documentation, build tooling, samples, user-space helper tools, generated initramfs support, licenses, and validation utilities.
- Repository support layer: documentation, build tooling, samples, user-space helper tools, generated initramfs support, licenses, and validation utilities.
- Touches IRQ or DMA behavior; this matters for the representative real-device path.
- Allocates kernel memory; connect allocation flags and lifetime to context constraints.
Dependency Surface
- No C-style include directives detected by the generator.
Detected Declarations
- No top-level syscall, struct, function, initcall, or export declaration detected by the generator.
Annotated Snippet
==============================================================
Advanced Linux Sound Architecture - Driver Configuration guide
==============================================================
Kernel Configuration
====================
To enable ALSA support you need at least to build the kernel with
primary sound card support (``CONFIG_SOUND``). Since ALSA can emulate
OSS, you don't have to choose any of the OSS modules.
Enable "OSS API emulation" (``CONFIG_SND_OSSEMUL``) and both OSS mixer
and PCM supports if you want to run OSS applications with ALSA.
If you want to support the WaveTable functionality on cards such as
SB Live! then you need to enable "Sequencer support"
(``CONFIG_SND_SEQUENCER``).
To make ALSA debug messages more verbose, enable the "Verbose printk"
and "Debug" options. To check for memory leaks, turn on "Debug memory"
too. "Debug detection" will add checks for the detection of cards.
Please note that all the ALSA ISA drivers support the Linux isapnp API
(if the card supports ISA PnP). You don't need to configure the cards
using isapnptools.
Module parameters
=================
The user can load modules with options. If the module supports more than
one card and you have more than one card of the same type then you can
specify multiple values for the option separated by commas.
Module snd
----------
The core ALSA module. It is used by all ALSA card drivers.
It takes the following options which have global effects.
major
major number for sound driver;
Default: 116
cards_limit
limiting card index for auto-loading (1-8);
Default: 1;
For auto-loading more than one card, specify this option
together with snd-card-X aliases.
slots
Reserve the slot index for the given driver;
This option takes multiple strings.
See `Module Autoloading Support`_ section for details.
debug
Specifies the debug message level;
(0 = disable debug prints, 1 = normal debug messages,
2 = verbose debug messages);
This option appears only when ``CONFIG_SND_DEBUG=y``.
This option can be dynamically changed via sysfs
/sys/module/snd/parameters/debug file.
Module snd-pcm-oss
------------------
The PCM OSS emulation module.
This module takes options which change the mapping of devices.
dsp_map
PCM device number maps assigned to the 1st OSS device;
Annotation
- Atlas domain: Support Tooling And Documentation / Documentation.
- Implementation status: atlas-only.
- IRQ or DMA behavior appears here, which is relevant to the selected PCIe/NVMe device path.
Implementation Notes
- This generated page is the file-by-file coverage layer; curated subsystem chapters should link here when they synthesize a multi-file control flow.
- Core OS pages should be promoted from atlas-only to deep-reviewed when they explain data structures, invariants, locking, lifecycle, and C implementation snippets.
- Driver-family pages are intentionally pattern-oriented unless they are part of the selected PCIe/NVMe representative device path.