It has been brought to our attention that FireWire users may be in for a nasty surprise, particularly, those who have yet to update their Arch Linux systems. Details are scarce as of this moment in writing, but a reporter [1] just came in with a story which should shed the most light [2].

OK, not really; it’s really simple. There are two kinds, or “stacks”, of FireWire subsystems in the kernel. One is old, and one is new. The old one is, well, an older stack, and is no longer provided. The new, well, is a more recent stack [3] with nicer module names which came with a recent kernel, which in turn was recently brought to us by Arch Linux [4]. FFADO was somewhat ready for this, but not completely (neither was Linux itself, maybe). Hence, this situation.

We do not think this warrants an update to our primary realtime kernel, since there is no such thing as 2.6.32-rt yet. However, you may like to know that the latest Linux comes with a new “make localmodconfig” which will definitely speed up your builds. If not, you may want to refrain from updating or roll back somehow.

On another note, you may have been expecting an update to the server-going-down article, so take this as one (although we brought things back up 2 weeks after that). The lack of an update can be attributed to the feeling of “incompleteness”, because we had a number of things in the TODO which we wanted to get done.

But never fear, we’re here – even when we’re not. So be good, be evil, and have a happy new year!

[1] http://forums.archaudio.org/topic/kernel-2632-firewire-and-jack-ffado-big-mess
[2] http://www.ffado.org/?q=node/1316
[3] http://ieee1394.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Juju_Migration
[4] http://www.archlinux.org/news/477/

1) Can be used by  anyone in the RT Audio community; generic to an extent
2) Humbly stripped of useless stuff (this is why  we mentioned “generic to an extent”)
3) Patched and tweaked with utmost care and simplicity (no extensive patching like adding support for Grandma)
4) Can work wonders
5) Can drive and lift a Rolls Royce

And oh yes, we’re always looking for suggestions on which kernel version to use for the ultimate experience. We know it’s subjective and the point is moot, but at least it gives us an idea. For the moment, it looks like one or two users are facing issues related to JACK with the current kernel26rt. We can’t tell if it’s a borked kernel or a borked system, so more feedback (from more people) is a must (in the future)!

No, we’re not noobs (goes out to the Gentoo no0bs) – we just want a kernel which can blow people away. That is why we’re selling out.

Arch Linux rules, and so do we.