SURVIVING ON PLANET CCRMA, TWO YEARS LATER AND STILL
ALIVE
Fernando Lopez-Lezcano,
[email protected]
CCRMA
Stanford University
http://ccrma.stanford.edu/planetccrma/software/
ABSTRACT
Planet CCRMA at Home [2] is a collection of packages
that you can add to a computer running RedHat 9 or Fedora Core 1, 2 or 3 to transform it into an audio workstation with a low-latency kernel, current ALSA audio
drivers and a nice set of music, midi, audio and video applications. It is also now a standalone distribution based
on Fedora Core 3 which you can install by itself (without
a previously running Fedora Core install). This presentation will outline the changes that have happened in the
Planet over the past two years, focusing on the evolution
of the linux kernel that is part of Planet CCRMA.
1. INTRODUCTION
Creating worlds is not an easy task, and Planet CCRMA is
no exception. The last two years have seen a phenomenal
expansion of the project. The history of it will reflect, I
hope, part of the recent history of Linux Audio projects
and kernel patching.
2. A BIT OF HISTORY
For those of you that are not familiar with Planet CCRMA
[2] a bit of history is in order. At CCRMA (the Center
for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics at Stanford University) we have been using Linux as a platform
for research and music production since the end of 1996
or so. Besides the distribution I installed at the time, I
started building and installing custom music software in
our main server (we were dual booting PCs between Linux
and NEXTSTEP, which was at the time the main computing platform at CCRMA). Sound support on Linux in
1997 was a bit primitive, not many sound cards were supported, and very few existed that had decent sound quality
at all. Low latency was not a concern as just getting reliable sound output at all times was a challenge. Eventually
the sound support in Linux evolved and patches became
available for the kernel that enabled it to start working at
low latencies suitable for reliable realtime audio work, so
I started building custom monolithic kernels that incorporated those patches and all the drivers I needed for the
hardware we used (easier than trying to learn the details
of loadable kernel modules:-).
At some point some adventurous CCRMA users started
to install and try Linux in their home machines, and wanted
an easy way to install the custom software available in all
CCRMA workstations.
I was installing RedHat so I started to use RPM (the
RedHat Package Manager) to package a few key applications that were used in teaching and research (for example the Snd sound editor, the CM - CLM - CMN Common Lisp based composition and synthesis environment,
Pd and so on and so forth).
At first I just stored those packages in a network accessible directory and told potential users, "there you are,
copy the packages from that directory and install them
in your machine". A simple Web site with links to the
packages was the next step, and installation instructions
were added as I got feedback from users. Finally the
project was made "public" with an email announcing it
in the Cmdist mailing list - a list for users of Snd and
CM/CLM/CMN. The announcement happened on September 14th 2001.
This changed the nature of the project. As more people
outside of CCRMA started using the packages I started
to get requests for packaging music software that I would
not have thought of installing at CCRMA. The number of
packages started to grow and this growth benefited both
CCRMAlites and external Planet CCRMA users alike.
So Planet CCRMA was never an "official" project, it
was just a side effect of me packaging software to install
at CCRMA. The need for easier installation and upgrades
grew and at the beginning of 2002 apt for rpm (a port of
the Debian apt tool by Conectiva) was incorporated into
Planet CCRMA, and used for all package installation and
management. For the first time Planet CCRMA was reasonably easy to install by mere mortals (oh well, mere
geek mortals).
Fast forward to today: there are more than 600 individual packages spanning many open source projects in each
of the supported branches of RedHat/Fedora Core. You
can follow the external manifestation of these changes over
time by reading the online ChangeLog that I have maintained as part of the project (a boring read, to say the
least).
