#614765 liboss-salsa-asound2: Cannot install, dependencies problems with libasound2

Package:
oss4
Source:
oss4
Submitter:
Fyodor Kovin
Date:
2025-10-26 21:33:02 UTC
Severity:
normal
Tags:
#614765#5
Date:
2011-02-23 10:25:25 UTC
From:
To:
Although the package provides libasound2, it still cannot be used
instead of it, because many other packages depend on specific
versions of libasound2.

The following packages depend on libasound > 1.0.18
and become broken when trying to install liboss-salsa-asound2:

chromium-browser
emacs23
lxpanel
mplayer
libportaudio2
libesd0
xulrunner-1.9.1
#614765#10
Date:
2011-02-23 12:23:54 UTC
From:
To:
tags 614765 + wontfix
thanks

Fyodor Kovin, le Wed 23 Feb 2011 15:25:25 +0500, a écrit :

I know, and AFAIK there's no way around it because Debian's versioning
does not permit to provide a given version of a package. This package is
mostly intended for non-Linux ports.

Which use case do you have? Are you stuck with an old Linux OSS driver?
In principle ALSA now covers all the needs that OSS used to fill.

Samuel
#614765#15
Date:
2011-02-23 15:52:02 UTC
From:
To:
OSS4 seems to support my soundcard better.

Thanks,
Fyodor.
#614765#20
Date:
2011-02-23 22:52:06 UTC
From:
To:
Фёдор Ковин, le Wed 23 Feb 2011 15:52:02 +0000, a écrit :

And if you blacklist the alsa drivers, the applications don't fallback
to the OSS interface?

Samuel
#614765#27
Date:
2011-02-27 16:32:10 UTC
From:
To:
2011/2/23 Samuel Thibault <sthibault@debian.org>:
Some do, but some don't. jackd2 doesn't have an OSS driver, and I
couldn't make jackd1 produce sound of acceptable quality with OSS.
Audacity crashes when playing through OSS. I couldn't make non-free
Flash Player work with OSS when I had version 4.2-build2003 from the
Debian archive installed.

BTW, oss4-dkms 4.2-build2003 doesn't compile with kernel 2.6.37, so I
had to build and install a deb from the vanilla OSS 4.2-build2004
package. After that Flash Player plays sound at least, but I still
have problems with jack and Audacity.

Thanks,
Fyodor.
#614765#32
Date:
2011-02-27 16:19:15 UTC
From:
To:
2011/2/23 Samuel Thibault <sthibault@debian.org>:
Some do, but some don't. jackd2 doesn't have an OSS driver, and I
couldn't make jackd1 produce sound of acceptable quality with OSS.
Audacity crashes when playing through OSS. I couldn't make non-free
Flash Player work with OSS when I had version 4.2-build2003 from the
Debian archive installed.

BTW, oss4-dkms 4.2-build2003 doesn't compile with kernel 2.6.37, so I
had to build and install a deb from the vanilla OSS 4.2-build2004
package. After that Flash Player plays sound at least, but I still
have problems with jack and Audacity.

Thanks,
Fyodor.
#614765#37
Date:
2011-03-19 13:46:01 UTC
From:
To:
liboss-salsa-asound2 tries to provide a replacement to libasound2
by declaring a Provides: libasound2 and a Conflicts: libasound2

Unfortunately, 1889 packages in squeeze absolutely need (we say 'strongly
depend on' [2]) the real package libasound2, and not the virtual one
(because the declared dependencies are versioned); actually, for the
same reason, a total of 2531 packages are incompatible (we say
'strongly conflict' [1]) with liboss-salsa-asound2.

On the other hand, there is *no* package that strongly depends on
liboss-salsa-asound2, so the problem is with liboss-salsa-asound2,
and not with the other packages.

I may humbly suggest one of two solutions:

 - either drop liboss-salsa-asound2

 - or change the metadata by simply allowing liboss-salsa-asound2 to
   overwrite files belonging to libasound2 (if this is enough that
   /usr/lib/libasound.so.2 is the one contained in this package for
   everything to work fine)

Hope this helps
#614765#42
Date:
2011-03-19 14:06:27 UTC
From:
To:
Roberto Di Cosmo, le Sat 19 Mar 2011 14:46:01 +0100, a écrit :

Yes. And fails to, that's a known wontfix issue.

Unfortunately, yes.

Sure, since in principle people use alsa, not oss-under-alsa (they
should be fixed into simply using oss instead, if they did).

Agreed, but still wontfix.

Why?  It can be useful in the cases where it can be installed.  And we
_do_ need it on kfreebsd & hurd.

The libasound.so.2 provided by libsalsa clearly doesn't provide enough
support for everything to work fine: the announced compatibility is only
1.0.5, and there's no seq support.

So yes, it provides poor support for Linux, but that's an upstream lack
of feature, and not a reason for dropping it completely.

Samuel
#614765#47
Date:
2012-02-21 11:54:15 UTC
From:
To:
Dear submitter,

as the package oss-libsalsa has just been removed from the Debian archive
unstable we hereby close the associated bug reports.  We are sorry
that we couldn't deal with your issue properly.

For details on the removal, please see http://bugs.debian.org/660462

The version of this package that was in Debian prior to this removal
can still be found using http://snapshot.debian.org/.

This message was generated automatically; if you believe that there is
a problem with it please contact the archive administrators by mailing
ftpmaster@debian.org.

Debian distribution maintenance software
pp.
Alexander Reichle-Schmehl (the ftpmaster behind the curtain)