Where does the "alsa" command come from?

[lucrus73]

I'm trying to follow this document.

I'm on Debian Bullseye amd64 and I have no alsa command, be it installed or available for install with any package. I do have alsactl but it takes different options and I don't know how to map the instructions to it, assuming it were the right thing to do in my case.

Is it my fault or is the document outdated?

[markc]

Hi lucrus73 I skimmed that doc and finally found a reference to an "alsa" command but it's tied up with building the alsa-driver package from source and I doubt that would be required these days so you can skip that entire part of the doc. If fact I'm not sure you would need to do any of that entire doc these days. Using PulseAudio and Jack together would be a more useful combination. What are you actually trying to achieve?

Those instructions are indeed 10 years old so I'd be amazed if they still work without some fine-tuning.

[lucrus73]

I'm pretty sure my goal is well out of scope here, but, just to provide a brief answer, I'm configuring sound on a multiseat workstation where different users have different needs, and I want maximum flexibilty in routing sound between different sound systems.
I assume that having a virtual sound card as default one (index=0) will allow me to do whatever I need with whatever sound system I happen to use (including plain old ALSA for the old flash plugin, new PipeWire, OBS desktop sound recording and so on, for example). I'm not 100% sure I NEED it to be at index 0, but I like to stay on the safe side.

So, while trying to configure modprobe, I realized that "index=0" is not enough nowadays, and I tried to force reload of modules (#alsa force-unload) in order to test my configuration without rebooting every time.

I eventually found a different and working (index=0-wise) solution using the modprobe.d softdep directive, though I had to reboot to test it.

If I manage to obtain the flexibility I'm looking for in sound routing, I plan to submit a PR for the document, maybe adding a brief description of a use case in current years.

[markc]

Whew yeah, quite a complex setup. I'm sorry I can't offer any useful suggestions but if you get a working solution then a task-orientated page dedicated to your solution would make for an excellent PR!