19 Jan
2004
19 Jan
'04
11:33 a.m.
With all the new releases of audio software of late and all the shift
that's taking place among distros, I'm trying to devise a good
upgrade path for my DAW.
As it stands I'm running RedHat 9 with a patched kernel. I've
installed all the audio software I use by building from scratch --
downloading, compiling, and installing individual packages. At this
point, it has taken so much work to get my system where it is that
I'm loathe to upgrade it. Yet, with new versions of Rosegarden,
Muse, Ardour, and Jack coming out lately, I'd really like to take
advantage of those new features. OTOH, I'm worried that an upgrade
can cause problems with work that is in progress.
An ideal world for me would be a fairly straightforward binary
install process for the OS and most packages, with the capability to
install "development" versions of those packages that I'm interested
in playing with or contributing to. For example, suppose I found a
bug in Ardour that I could patch. I'd like to be able to code,
install, and test my patch without screwing up my existing system.
I'd also like to be able to upgrade individual packages and back out
the upgrade if it breaks something. It would be *really* cool to
have something like a virtual machine where I could have a test
environment and production enviornment on the same machine. Then I
could get things running in the test environment and push them to
production when I'm sure they are stable. Another issue is that I'm
thinking of moving from RedHat, but I don't know where to move to. I
tried Planet CCRMA for a while, but my dial-up made that prohibitive.
I'm about to upgrade to broadband, so I may revisit that.
So, anyway, how are you guys handling these issues? Do you install
from scratch? Do you install audio on top of an existing distro?
Which one? RedHat, Mandrake, Debian, SuSE, Gentoo, etc? Does Planet
CCRMA work well for you? What about Agnula? How do you upgrade
individual packages? How do you back out the upgrade if there's a
problem? Do you manage a separate "test" environment to keep from
bringing down your DAW?
I know there's no single answer to these questions, and eventually,
I'll just have to pick from all the equally viable choices. But I'd
also like to learn from the wisdom of folks who have more experience
with this -- find out what the pitfalls are with each choice. So I
would be greatly appreciative of any suggestions you guys might have.
Thanks,
Greg
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11:51 a.m.
So, anyway, how are you guys handling these issues?
Do you install
from scratch? Do you install audio on top of an existing distro?
Which one? RedHat, Mandrake, Debian, SuSE, Gentoo, etc? Does Planet
CCRMA work well for you? What about Agnula? How do you upgrade
individual packages? How do you back out the upgrade if there's a
problem? Do you manage a separate "test" environment to keep from
bringing down your DAW?
The PlanetCCRMA flow works very well for me on my slower 500MHz box.
Fernando's adoption of apt to handle all the dependencies and the fact that
he creates the binary distribution for us works very well for me on this
machine. Frankly, without Fernando I think I wouldn't be using Redhat
anymore.
On my faster 2.6GHz box I'm using Gentoo. Obviously this requires a faster
box since you're building all of the code on your machine, but it has been
the most stable distribution I've used so far. emerge again handles all the
dependencies which saves me a lot of time, so as long as I stay with the
'stable' flow for most things like Mozilla, Evolution, etc. then all of the
necessary stuff has been very stable. What I like about Gentoo vs. Redhat is
that most everyone's straight CVS code builds without having to modify
anything. Under Redhat you have to fiddle with configure options sometimes.
FYI - I wouldn't call my use of Linux a 'DAW' anymore. I tried. It didn't
work, mostly because of my sound card choice. Linux audio now plays an
important support role in my work, providing interesting soft synths and
audio processing programs. My DAW is still Windows Pro Tool s and likely
will be for a long time to come. (Upgrading hardware this week. Too much
money!) However I do all email on Linux, most of my browsing, and once in a
while even a bit of gaming. Yesterday I installed a DVD-/+RW drive and got
xine working. Now I'm movie capable too. All this keeps my fragile Windows
XP environment much cleaner and working better.
Cheers,
Mark
12:50 p.m.
Hallo,
Greg Reddin hat gesagt: // Greg Reddin wrote:
So, anyway, how are you guys handling these issues?
Do you install
from scratch?
I never reinstalled my Debian system from scratch in the last seven
years. I once installed Debian 1.2 at that time, which didn't work out
immediatly so it took my two or three re-installs. After those,
everything was done with dpkg upgrades and later apt-get upgrades. A
distribution (or OS like MS-Win) that requires reinstalls from scratch
is fundamentally broken in my opinion.
Do you install audio on top of an existing distro?
Which one? RedHat, Mandrake, Debian, SuSE, Gentoo, etc? Does Planet
CCRMA work well for you? What about Agnula? How do you upgrade
individual packages? How do you back out the upgrade if there's a
problem? Do you manage a separate "test" environment to keep from
bringing down your DAW?
As you by now may guess, I didn't run anything else besides Debian for
*years*, so I cannot comment on the other systems. But Debian and now
the AGNULA enhanced Debian have never really failed me over all this
time. Some reasons for this are:
1) dpkg/apt-get which are superior package management tools when it
comes to upgrade stability,
2) a *huge* skilled and helpful user base. When things were about to
break here because I ran Debian "unstable" (which isn't unstable in
general at all), I always found some poor soul on the debian lists who
had been through all this already and knew a solution or workaround.
In these cases, often there were fixed packages already available, or
I resorted to a downgrade which also is easy most of the time in
Debian because of automatic dependency resolving by apt-get/dpkg.
As I became quite familiar with the Debian tools over the years, I
have found the system to be very flexible as well, much more so than
eg. Suse. If I wanted to just use one package from another release, I
could just use the Debian source package to build a matching binary
for my machine.
Or currently I am running several AGNULA packages here, which will
eventually overwritten by packages from the main branch automatically
when those offer newer versions of, say, Jack.
In regard to "test" environments: I never had that. I like living on
the edge ;) and it turned out, that this did work with Debian very
well. Sometimes there are upgrades, that don't work out well at first,
of course. Every distribution has these, but my impression is, that
Debian has these less often and almost never with stable->stable
upgrades.
But as you currently have Redhat installed, it's probably easier to
just use the Planet/Fedora instead of doing the switch to Debian
(although this wouldn't be too difficult for you, I'm sure).
ciao
--
Frank Barknecht _ ______footils.org__
1:19 p.m.
Greg Reddin wrote:
So, anyway, how are you guys handling these issues? Do
you install
from scratch? Do you install audio on top of an existing distro?
Which one? RedHat, Mandrake, Debian, SuSE, Gentoo, etc? Does Planet
CCRMA work well for you? What about Agnula? How do you upgrade
individual packages? How do you back out the upgrade if there's a
problem? Do you manage a separate "test" environment to keep from
bringing down your DAW?
Hi Greg:
I've been running Linux audio apps for many years. I started out with
a Slackware installation and learned how to './configure; make; make
install' tarball packages (i.e. packages in the *.tar.gz or *.tgz
format). I liked doing things that way because everything was then
customized for my system.
Later I started using Red Hat (I think my first use was RH 6.2). I
didn't really get into installing RPMs, still preferring to install
things out of tarballs, but I did work a little with RPMs and at last
got the hang of installing and uninstalling with the rpm command.
Later still I installed Debian on a laptop and tried to learn how the
apt system worked. Alas, I didn't do too well, I didn't understand the
Debian way of doing things, so I didn't put in the time to learn the
details of working with the apt system. However, I did enjoy the system,
and I'm very attached to the Debian philosophy.
And that brings me at last to Planet CCRMA. I was hired to build two
machines for audio/video work, and I had been reading the Planet's docs,
so I decided to take the plunge. I already had broadband (DSL then) so I
put the hardware together and set up one machine using the CD method
(downloaded the RH ISOs and burned discs here at home) and the other
using a network installation. Both installations were relatively free of
problems, and I was very happy with the results (so were my clients).
So I decided to install Planet CCRMA on my own machine. I've been
running it for a while, and I'm very happy with it. Upgrading is as
simple as following Fernando's excellent instructions on the PlanetC
site. Apt-get is used to update and upgrade your packages, or you can
use the "synaptic" GUI. I like using apt-get to upgrade my system, but I
also like using synaptic to delete packages I'd rather not have. It's
all very easy for me, and I must admit I've become a Planet CCRMA partisan.
I also installed AGNULA's DeMuDi, the Debian half of that project, on
a second drive in my machine. I'm rapidly becoming as fond of AGNULA as
I am of Planet CCRMA, and I can recommend either system in good
conscience. Performance is excellent in both systems, and the base apps
are quite similar. I'll be upgrading to AGNULA 1.1.0 later this week,
using apt-get again, and I'm looking forward to having a more up-to-date
AGNULA here.
So there's my two drachmas. I've written a brief article about PlanetC
and AGNULA, it's here if you'd like to read it :
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=7342&mode=thread&order=…
Beware, it's not a HOWTO or a substitute for reading the distro docs,
but it might give you some more impetus towards either or both those
systems.
Best regards,
Dave Phillips
3:57 p.m.
Greg Reddin wrote:
With all the new releases of audio software of late
and all the shift
that's taking place among distros, I'm trying to devise a good
upgrade path for my DAW.
As it stands I'm running RedHat 9 with a patched kernel. I've
installed all the audio software I use by building from scratch --
downloading, compiling, and installing individual packages. At this
point, it has taken so much work to get my system where it is that
I'm loathe to upgrade it. Yet, with new versions of Rosegarden,
Muse, Ardour, and Jack coming out lately, I'd really like to take
advantage of those new features. OTOH, I'm worried that an upgrade
can cause problems with work that is in progress.
given the price of harddisks nowadays, i'd say clone your system over to
a new and possibly larger and faster disk, and start fiddling. if things
go haywire, you can go back.
you might even set up your boot loader to allow you to boot either
system w/o the need to open the case.
--
"I never use EQ, never, never, never. I previously used to use mic
positioning but I've even given up on that too."
- Jezar on http://www.audiomelody.com
Jörn Nettingsmeier
Kurfürstenstr 49, 45138 Essen, Germany
http://spunk.dnsalias.org (my server)
http://www.linuxaudiodev.org (Linux Audio Developers)
20 Jan
20 Jan
11:10 a.m.
--- Joern Nettingsmeier <nettings(a)folkwang-hochschule.de> wrote:
given the price of harddisks nowadays, i'd say
clone your system
over to
a new and possibly larger and faster disk, and start fiddling. if
things
go haywire, you can go back.
you might even set up your boot loader to allow you to boot either
system w/o the need to open the case.
I suppose I could do the same thing using a partition on one of my
existing hard disks.
I could set up a /test partition and install a "clean" distro there.
Then when i get ready to update a package I can install it and test
it in my /test environment before overwriting my production system.
I'll have to do some research on this as I don't actually know how to
do it yet but it seems simple enough :-)
Greg
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2:26 p.m.
Greg Reddin wrote
I suppose I could do the same thing using a partition
on one of my
existing hard disks.
I could set up a /test partition and install a "clean" distro there.
Then when i get ready to update a package I can install it and test
it in my /test environment before overwriting my production system.
I'll have to do some research on this as I don't actually know how to
do it yet but it seems simple enough :-)
I do this routinely with Gentoo.
# mount /dev/hdaX /mnt/daw -o ro
# mount /dev/hdaY /mnt/new-daw
# cd /mnt/daw
# tar -cf - . | (cd /mnt/new-daw; tar -xf -)
...wait 20 minutes...
# [editor of choice] /mnt/new-daw/etc/fstab
... fix up your bootloader (I use GRUB), and reboot to your cloned partition.
I ping-pong between two partitions, so I always have a 'stable' partition to
return to.
Good Luck
R
7:19 p.m.
I noticed that Thac's RPMs for Mandrake haven't gotten any press in
this thread. I know I've seen Thac's RPMs and Madrake flash across
this list, but never took the time to read those much. Is anyone
using that system with success? What's your opinion of Madrake as it
relates to audio work?
Thanks,
Greg
__________________________________
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7:30 p.m.
On Tue, 2004-01-20 at 18:16, Greg Reddin wrote:
I noticed that Thac's RPMs for Mandrake
haven't gotten any press in
this thread. I know I've seen Thac's RPMs and Madrake flash across
this list, but never took the time to read those much. Is anyone
using that system with success? What's your opinion of Madrake as it
relates to audio work?
My opinion is that the Digital Audio Workstation HowTo for Mandrake (
http://groundstate.ca/mdkdaw/ ) is like six months out of date. Oh
wait, that's my fault.
Seriously, we have more audio applications than anyone (except maybe
Fernando... I've never counted), and I try to keep them working (with
Thac and Fernando's and Gotz's help). I've even added some fancy stuff
like automatically launching qjackctl when ardour is started, etc.
Mandrake 10 will be out in about six weeks. If any of you could test
the beta (due out in a week or so), it would be a BIG help to me. See
http://qa.mandrakesoft.com/wiki for info... most of the audio apps will
not be on the beta CD, but you can installl them with urpmi.
We've got Alsa 1.0.1, the 2.4 multimedia kernel (lowlat, preempt,
sched0), the 2.6 kernel, this week's jackit release, a graphical
OSS/ALSA switcher, and other goodies. I was hoping to get the echo
audio drivers in, but looks like it won't happen.
Austin
P.S. Most of Thac's RPMs ARE part of Mandrake... he just keeps them
updated between releases, which we don't.
--
Austin Acton
Synthetic Organic Chemist, Teaching Assistant, Ph.D. Candidate
Department of Chemistry, York University, Toronto
MandrakeLinux Volunteer Developer, homepage: www.groundstate.ca
2 Feb
2 Feb
1:27 p.m.
Sorry to be so late on this reply, but I want to thank everyone who
offered helpful advice on this thread. I currently have Mandrake and
RedHat both installed on my laptop. I'm evaluting Thac's RPMs on my
Mandrake partition and I'll probably be updating RedHat with FC1 and
evaluating Planet CCRMA on the other partition. Once I make my
"final" decision, I'll be upgrading my home DAW with whatever I
choose.
Thanks again. This was very helpful information.
Greg
--- Austin Acton <aacton(a)yorku.ca> wrote:
On Tue, 2004-01-20 at 18:16, Greg Reddin wrote:
__________________________________
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I noticed that Thac's RPMs for Mandrake
haven't gotten any press
in
this thread. I know I've seen Thac's
RPMs and Madrake flash
across
this list, but never took the time to read those
much. Is anyone
using that system with success? What's your opinion of Madrake
as it
relates to audio work?
My opinion is that the Digital Audio Workstation HowTo for Mandrake
(
http://groundstate.ca/mdkdaw/ ) is like six months out of date. Oh
wait, that's my fault.
Seriously, we have more audio applications than anyone (except
maybe
Fernando... I've never counted), and I try to keep them working
(with
Thac and Fernando's and Gotz's help). I've even added some fancy
stuff
like automatically launching qjackctl when ardour is started, etc.
Mandrake 10 will be out in about six weeks. If any of you could
test
the beta (due out in a week or so), it would be a BIG help to me.
See
http://qa.mandrakesoft.com/wiki for info... most of the audio apps
will
not be on the beta CD, but you can installl them with urpmi.
We've got Alsa 1.0.1, the 2.4 multimedia kernel (lowlat, preempt,
sched0), the 2.6 kernel, this week's jackit release, a graphical
OSS/ALSA switcher, and other goodies. I was hoping to get the echo
audio drivers in, but looks like it won't happen.
Austin
P.S. Most of Thac's RPMs ARE part of Mandrake... he just keeps them
updated between releases, which we don't.
--
Austin Acton
Synthetic Organic Chemist, Teaching Assistant, Ph.D.
Candidate
Department of Chemistry, York University, Toronto
MandrakeLinux Volunteer Developer, homepage:
www.groundstate.ca
20 Jan
20 Jan
3:02 a.m.
On Mon, 2004-01-19 at 07:30, Greg Reddin wrote:
Does PlanetCCRMA work well for you?
Yes. Especially for a Red Hat user (but not only) it's the perfect
audio/music distribution.
How do you upgrade individual packages?
Well, i use PlanetCCRMA but i'm not religious about it. If i wanna build
my own RPM, then i just go ahead and build it.
How do you back out the upgrade if there's a
problem? Do you manage a separate "test" environment to keep from
bringing down your DAW?
Install everything from RPM, don't erase old packages too early, and
you'll be able to back out.
--
Florin Andrei
http://florin.myip.org/
3:06 a.m.
On Mon, 2004-01-19 at 22:58, Florin Andrei wrote:
On Mon, 2004-01-19 at 07:30, Greg Reddin wrote:
...and don't build RPMs as root. ;-)
--
Florin Andrei
http://florin.myip.org/
How do you back out the upgrade if there's a
problem? Do you manage a separate "test" environment to keep from
bringing down your DAW?
Install everything from RPM, don't erase old packages too early, and
you'll be able to back out. 
8:26 a.m.
Hi Greg,
On Monday 19 January 2004 3:30 pm, Greg Reddin wrote:
What about Agnula? How do you upgrade
individual packages? How do you back out the upgrade if there's a
problem? Do you manage a separate "test" environment to keep from
bringing down your DAW?
I'm using Agnula on a double-booted system. I've got Woody/DeMuDi-1.0 on hda
and Sarge/DeMuDi-1.1.0 on hdb I've set up chroots in both directions so I can
access the one while booted into the other. It works for me.
You'd probably want to track the Agnua/unstable packages - they do maintain
ReHMuDi packages too, which I imagine you can install on top of Red Hat same
as Debian. You may even be able to use apt, I don't know.
I'm actually using synaptic as a package manager ATM and apart from a couple
of niggles it works well. I can't imagine running a system which didn't have
apt - It is super-cool IMHO and extremely well documented, such that I'm able
to run insane mixed systems side by side with relative ease. I'd say it was
easier to configure and run than, say kmail. I'm still a relative newbie, so
experience may show me the pitfalls, but I haven't seen them yet. I guess
backing out of upgrades is tricky to say the least, these tools weren't
really designed to go backwards. Apt-pinning works for packages in most
cases.
I don't know if it's as up to date as you'd want - I'm currently running:
Rosegarden: 0.9.1
muse: Linux Music Editor; Version 0.6.1
jackd 0.90.1
I expect newer packages will appear as soon as ...
I've downloaded most of it over a dialup (ISOs will be available soon)
admittedly this has involved a couple of all-night downloads - not
recommended procedure I guess :-]
I'm very happy with it. Agnula is buzzing right now and the support is
excellent.
HTH
tim hall
12:49 p.m.
What about
Agnula? How do you upgrade
individual packages? How do you back out the upgrade if there's a
problem? Do you manage a separate "test" environment to keep from
bringing down your DAW?
I'm using Agnula on a double-booted system. I've got Woody/DeMuDi-1.0 on hda
and Sarge/DeMuDi-1.1.0 on hdb I've set up chroots in both directions so I can
access the one while booted into the other. It works for me.
You'd probably want to track the Agnua/unstable packages - they do maintain
ReHMuDi packages too, which I imagine you can install on top of Red Hat same
as Debian. You may even be able to use apt, I don't know. 
1:51 p.m.
tim hall wrote:
Hi Greg,
On Monday 19 January 2004 3:30 pm, Greg Reddin wrote:
For what it's worth... I use YUM instead of apt
and I LOVE IT! It is the easiest way to upgrade.
Try it out. I've not tried downgrading though.
--
===========================================================
Richard K. Ingalls
Director of Information Technology
Glenwood R-8 School District
West Plains, MO
email..ringalls(a)glenwood.k12.mo.us
web....glenwood.k12.mo.us
ph.....417.256.4849
fax....417.257.2567
"Glenwood R-8: home of the mustangs!"
===========================================================
What about Agnula? How do you upgrade
individual packages? How do you back out the upgrade if there's a
problem? Do you manage a separate "test" environment to keep from
bringing down your DAW?
I'm using Agnula on a double-booted system. I've got Woody/DeMuDi-1.0 on hda
and Sarge/DeMuDi-1.1.0 on hdb I've set up chroots in both directions so I can
access the one while booted into the other. It works for me.
You'd probably want to track the Agnua/unstable packages - they do maintain
ReHMuDi packages too, which I imagine you can install on top of Red Hat same
as Debian. You may even be able to use apt, I don't know.
I'm actually using synaptic as a package manager ATM and apart from a couple
of niggles it works well. I can't imagine running a system which didn't have
apt - It is super-cool IMHO and extremely well documented, such that I'm able
to run insane mixed systems side by side with relative ease. I'd say it was
easier to configure and run than, say kmail. I'm still a relative newbie, so
experience may show me the pitfalls, but I haven't seen them yet. I guess
backing out of upgrades is tricky to say the least, these tools weren't
really designed to go backwards. Apt-pinning works for packages in most
cases.
7594
days inactive
7608
days old
linux-audio-user@lists.linuxaudio.org
15 comments
12 participants
participants (12)
-
Austin Acton -
Dave Phillips -
Fernando Pablo Lopez-Lezcano -
Florin Andrei -
Frank Barknecht -
Greg Reddin -
Joern Nettingsmeier -
Mark Knecht -
Richard K. Ingalls -
rob fell -
Steve Harris -
tim hall