Bug 155332

I suppose the card was configured with YaST, so please attach the YaST logs. Have you asserted that these devices work?

Here are the logs (from a 10.0 installation but that´s the same issue).
What do you mean with "asserted"? I can´t test it without /dev/sequencer AFAIK. And under windows the device does work.

Created attachment 71455 [details]
YaST2 logs

Your report was only about the missing links. What I asked was if the device works after you created these links manually. MIDI support is generelly poor under Linux.

Takashi: Can you please provide a comment about the general support status of MIDI sound (maby for this card) here?

You need to install snd-mpu401 driver by selecting it via yast manually.  It's not automatically installed.

Thanks.
Michael: Have you installed this package?

It's not a package but a driver.  Configure it via yast2 sound module.

As additional notes: you likely don't have to specify any io ports or irq as module options.  Usually PnP BIOS sets up them, and snd-mpu401 driver auto-probes the h/w information.

What do you mean with "select it in YaST2"?
The sound module just shows the audio codec.
And IMHO MIDI should be automatic like PCM is via hotplug. If an MPU-401 is there then the module should be loaded.

Add mpu401 driver manually in yast sound module.

The PnP BIOS stuff isn't supported as hotpluggable.

YaST says that the loading of the module failed.
When I execute "modprobe snd-mpu401" the module gets loaded (I see it with "lsmod") but I still don´t have /dev/sequencer or /dev/music.

Check /proc/asound/cards after loading snd-mpu401 module.  The entry of MPU401 should appear as the secondary card.
Then run "cat /proc/asound/seq/clients" to see whether MPU401 sequencer port became available.

If /dev/sequecner doesn't exist, load snd-seq-oss module manually.
Since /dev/sequencer and /dev/music are almost deprecated devices, the corresponding driver isn't loaded per default.

So I suppose this is not a YaST problem, more a missing feature. Reassigning this to you, Takashi.

OK this does work.
So what I would suggest is loading the snd-seq-oss module by default since the "regular" emulation for pcm devices is also loaded by default.
Second, I saw that when I disable the mpu401 I´ve also a /dev/sequencer and I get:

michael@r098088:~> cat /proc/asound/seq/clients
Client info
  cur  clients : 3
  peak clients : 3
  max  clients : 192

Client   0 : "System" [Kernel]
  Port   0 : "Timer" (Rwe-)
  Port   1 : "Announce" (R-e-)
    Connecting To: 63:0
Client  62 : "Midi Through" [Kernel]
  Port   0 : "Midi Through Port-0" (RWe-)
Client  63 : "OSS sequencer" [Kernel]
  Port   0 : "Receiver" (-we-)
    Connected From: 0:1
  Output pool :
    Pool size          : 1024
    Cells in use       : 0
    Peak cells in use  : 22
    Alloc success      : 129
    Alloc failures     : 0
Client  72 : "MPU-401 UART MIDI" [Kernel]
  Port   0 : "MPU-401 UART MIDI" (RWeX)
 
So does ALSA provide midi even without an MPU-401?

The module can be auto-loaded by accessing hat proc file.  That's why it's not loaded by the init script.

Loading snd-seq-oss is nothing but useless for for 99% of users, so I'll add a new sysconfig variable for control this, instead of loading unconditionally.

So why do you load snd-pcm-oss (or whatever the pcm emulation is) by default? Not many users are using skype or teamspeak.
IMHO SuSe should be usable for as many users as possible without having to reconfigure anything. Look at all these beautiful DOS games or emulators. They all need midi, and there are also some people using it. And loading this module doesn´t have ay drawbacks AFAIK.

The OSS PCM and mixer emulations will be removed eventually, but not in this release.