Installing ALSA

rossjman1 · 09-17-2005, 11:19 PM

Oh, sorry. alsamixer works (I find it kinda confusing to use), but still no sound. I still get error messages "device not found" and "device /dev/dsp does not exist".

adz · 09-17-2005, 11:32 PM

Quote:

alsamixer works (I find it kinda confusing to use), but still no sound.

I don't see anything confusing about it. Press "m" to (un)mute any particular channel and make sure all (and I mean all) channels are around the 80% mark.

Quote:

I still get error messages "device not found" and "device /dev/dsp does not exist".

Presumably these error messages appear when you try to PLAY sound and not from alsamixer. This leads me to believe that the apps you are using to play sound (what are they, btw?) are still using their OSS outputs. It's also possible that you have something (like arts or esd) trying to use OSS sound and it is blocking everything from using either OSS or ALSA sound. Do you use either KDE or GNOME?

With ALSA it is possible to play multiple sounds at once but you have to configure the Dmix Plugin. I wouldn't worry about that, though until you can play something.

rossjman1 · 09-17-2005, 11:52 PM

Quote:

This leads me to believe that the apps you are using to play sound (what are they, btw?) are still using their OSS outputs.

I'm trying to play sounds from Rhytmbox and BMP.

Quote:

Do you use either KDE or GNOME?

No, I use XFCE. I do use mostly gtk applications, though, and I'm using GDM.

I made everything in alsamixer 80, but still no sounds.

adz · 09-18-2005, 12:08 AM

Well I don't know how to change rhythmbox's settings but in BMP (assuming you mean Beep Media Player), go to Preferences -> Plugins -> Output and select "ALSA 0.9.7 output plugin" and try playing something. If still nothing make sure there are no processes like artsd or esd running. If there are, kill them and try playing something again.

rossjman1 · 09-18-2005, 12:22 AM

Now I'm able to play music in BMP, but I don't hear anything. How would I check to make sure esd or arts isnt running? I couldn't find anything when I did 'top' as root. Sorry, I'm kinda new to Linux.

adz · 09-18-2005, 01:25 AM

Could you post the output of the amixer command?

To get a list of running processes it's best to try ps -A or some variant. To search for a specific process, try ps -A |grep <(partial) process name>. For example ps -A |grep art will bring up all processes with the string "art" in them (like artsd, for instance).

To kill a process, you can either try killall <process name> and that will kill ALL processes with that EXACT name. Sometimes there may be multiple instances of a process and all of them would die with the above command. For example killall proc1 would kill all instances of the process called proc1 (but not processes proc12 or aproc1). If you want to kill a SPECIFIC process then you would use the command kill <process id> where the process id would be gleaned from the above variations of the ps command.

rossjman1 · 09-18-2005, 08:16 PM

I did these as a user, not as root.

Code:

jantosh@debian:~$ amixer
Simple mixer control 'AC97 in',0
  Capabilities: cswitch cswitch-joined cswitch-exclusive
  Capture exclusive group: 0
  Capture channels: Mono
  Mono: Capture [off]
Simple mixer control 'Analog Center/LFE',0
  Capabilities: volume
  Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right
  Limits: 0 - 255
  Mono: 205 [80%]
  Front Left:
  Front Right:
Simple mixer control 'Analog Front',0
  Capabilities: volume
  Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right
  Limits: 0 - 255
  Mono: 205 [80%]
  Front Left:
  Front Right:
Simple mixer control 'Analog Rear',0
  Capabilities: volume
  Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right
  Limits: 0 - 255
  Mono: 205 [80%]
  Front Left:
  Front Right:
Simple mixer control 'Analog Unknown',0
  Capabilities: volume
  Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right
  Limits: 0 - 255
  Mono: 205 [80%]
  Front Left:
  Front Right:
Simple mixer control 'CAPTURE feedback into PLAYBACK',0
  Capabilities: volume
  Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right
  Limits: 0 - 255
  Mono: 205 [80%]
  Front Left:
  Front Right:
Simple mixer control 'SPDIF Center/LFE',0
  Capabilities: volume
  Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right
  Limits: 0 - 255
  Mono: 205 [80%]
  Front Left:
  Front Right:
Simple mixer control 'SPDIF Front',0
  Capabilities: volume
  Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right
  Limits: 0 - 255
  Mono: 205 [80%]
  Front Left:
  Front Right:
Simple mixer control 'SPDIF Out',0
  Capabilities: pswitch pswitch-joined
  Playback channels: Mono
  Mono: Playback [on]
Simple mixer control 'SPDIF Rear',0
  Capabilities: volume
  Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right
  Limits: 0 - 255
  Mono: 205 [80%]
  Front Left:
  Front Right:
Simple mixer control 'SPDIF Unknown',0
  Capabilities: volume
  Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right
  Limits: 0 - 255
  Mono: 205 [80%]
  Front Left:
  Front Right:
Simple mixer control 'SPDIF in',0
  Capabilities: cswitch cswitch-joined cswitch-exclusive
  Capture exclusive group: 0
  Capture channels: Mono
  Mono: Capture [off]
Simple mixer control 'SPDIF out',0
  Capabilities: cswitch cswitch-joined cswitch-exclusive
  Capture exclusive group: 0
  Capture channels: Mono
  Mono: Capture [off]
Simple mixer control 'SRC out',0
  Capabilities: cswitch cswitch-joined cswitch-exclusive
  Capture exclusive group: 0
  Capture channels: Mono
  Mono: Capture [off]
Simple mixer control 'i2s in',0
  Capabilities: cswitch cswitch-joined cswitch-exclusive
  Capture exclusive group: 0
  Capture channels: Mono
  Mono: Capture [on]
Simple mixer control 'i2s mixer out',0
  Capabilities: cswitch cswitch-joined cswitch-exclusive
  Capture exclusive group: 0
  Capture channels: Mono
  Mono: Capture [off]
jantosh@debian:~$ ps -e
  PID TTY          TIME CMD
    1 ?        00:00:00 init
    2 ?        00:00:00 ksoftirqd/0
    3 ?        00:00:00 events/0
    4 ?        00:00:00 khelper
    5 ?        00:00:00 kthread
    7 ?        00:00:00 kacpid
   73 ?        00:00:00 kblockd/0
   99 ?        00:00:00 pdflush
  100 ?        00:00:00 pdflush
  102 ?        00:00:00 aio/0
  101 ?        00:00:00 kswapd0
  687 ?        00:00:00 kseriod
  948 ?        00:00:00 kjournald
 1611 ?        00:00:00 khubd
 1897 ?        00:00:00 shpchpd_event
 2682 ?        00:00:00 dhclient
 2687 ?        00:00:00 portmap
 3048 ?        00:00:00 syslogd
 3051 ?        00:00:00 klogd
 3061 ?        00:00:00 cupsd
 3084 ?        00:00:00 parallel
 3087 ?        00:00:00 dbus-daemon-1
 3120 ?        00:00:00 exim4
 3126 ?        00:00:00 inetd
 3277 ?        00:00:00 sshd
 3284 ?        00:00:00 xfs
 3379 ?        00:00:00 Xprt
 3391 ?        00:00:00 famd
 3407 ?        00:00:00 rpc.statd
 3431 ?        00:00:00 atd
 3437 ?        00:00:00 cron
 3442 ?        00:00:00 gdm
 3444 ?        00:00:00 gdm
 3555 ?        00:00:03 Xorg
 3562 tty1     00:00:00 getty
 3563 tty2     00:00:00 login
 3564 tty3     00:00:00 getty
 3565 tty4     00:00:00 getty
 3566 tty5     00:00:00 getty
 3567 tty6     00:00:00 getty
 3657 tty2     00:00:00 bash
 3688 ?        00:00:00 sh
 3762 ?        00:00:00 ssh-agent
 3763 ?        00:00:00 ssh-agent
 3776 ?        00:00:00 sh
 3777 ?        00:00:00 xscreensaver
 3780 ?        00:00:00 ssh-agent
 3783 ?        00:00:00 xfce4-session
 3786 ?        00:00:00 xfce-mcs-manage
 3789 ?        00:00:00 xfwm4
 3791 ?        00:00:01 xfdesktop
 3793 ?        00:00:06 xfce4-panel
 3795 ?        00:00:00 evolution-alarm
 3797 ?        00:00:00 gconfd-2
 3799 ?        00:00:00 bonobo-activati
 3802 ?        00:00:00 evolution-data-
 3804 ?        00:00:02 gnome-terminal
 3806 ?        00:00:04 firefox-bin
 3846 ?        00:00:00 gnome-pty-helpe
 3847 pts/0    00:00:00 bash
 3872 pts/0    00:00:00 ps
jantosh@debian:~$

I know the driver is finally working as I can hear the faint "pop" during boot when it loads the driver. I can also hear a light buzz sound when I put me ear up against the speakers. At least I'm making progress...

adz · 09-18-2005, 10:23 PM

Just out of interest, you did disable the onboard sound, right? Could you also check all the cables/speakers?

Another thing, what kernel/alsa version are you running? Kernel version can be found out using the command uname -r and the alsa version can be gotten from cat /proc/asound/version.

One last thing, could you try another program like xmms to play music or aplay to play wavs.

rossjman1 · 09-18-2005, 10:40 PM

Code:

jantosh@debian:~$ uname -a
Linux debian 2.6.12-1-386 #1 Tue Sep 6 14:35:54 UTC 2005 i686 GNU/Linux
jantosh@debian:~$ cat /proc/asound/version
Advanced Linux Sound Architecture Driver Version 1.0.9rc2  (Thu Mar 24 10:33:39 2005 UTC).

I have the same problem with XMMS as I did BMP (I changed the output from OSS to Alsa). I didn't see any option in the BIOS to disable onboard sound. I'm using some sort of Pheonix Bios.

adz · 09-18-2005, 10:51 PM

Hmmm... 1.0.9rc2. I would probably use the newest version. Try installing from source. I can't think of anything else.

rossjman1 · 09-19-2005, 04:50 PM

I uninstalled 4-Front's OSS (/usr/lib/oss/scripts/oss-uninstall), and now I can play music in Rhythmbox, but I still can't hear anything. I have PhoenixBIOS rev. 1.03 8/20/99, but can't figure out how to disable onboard sound.

adz · 09-19-2005, 09:18 PM

You installed OSS? Well that could cause problems. Like I said, try installing ALSA from source. It's not that hard and will probably override any previous settings. Not to mention you'll get a newer version of the drivers. As I understand, support for your card only arrived in the 1.0.9 release so one could reasonably expect the 1.0.9rc2 drivers to be a little wierd.

rossjman1 · 09-19-2005, 09:32 PM

I don't know what to download, as the download section of alsa's site has hundreds of files. Also, this would be my first time installing something from source, so I will probably need help installing it.

adz · 09-19-2005, 10:46 PM

On the right hand side of the ALSA website - near the top - there is the "Latest Software Releases" section. Get the latest stable releases. You'll need the driver, libraries, utilities and probably the oss-compat. For example, to download the driver package you'd click on the "1.0.9b" link (not the "driver" link since that will take you to the repositories and hundreds of files). Then you follow the instructions to set it up. Post back if you have problems.

You'll probably also need the kernel headers for your kernel. So you need to get the appropriate linux-headers-<kernel version> package. For you, I think that apt-get install linux-headers-2.6.12-1-386 would do the trick. You need to make sure the headers package matches EXACTLY with your kernel version.

rossjman1 · 09-20-2005, 03:56 PM

Alsa-drivers and Alsa-oss installed perfectly, and Alsa-libs installed with a few warnings. Here's what I got when I tried to do a ./configure with alsa-utils:

Code:

debian:/usr/src/alsa/alsa-utils-1.0.9a# ./configure
checking for a BSD-compatible install... /usr/bin/install -c
checking whether build environment is sane... yes
checking for gawk... no
checking for mawk... mawk
checking whether make sets $(MAKE)... yes
checking whether NLS is requested... yes
checking for msgfmt... /usr/bin/msgfmt
checking for gmsgfmt... /usr/bin/msgfmt
checking for xgettext... /usr/bin/xgettext
checking for msgmerge... /usr/bin/msgmerge
checking for style of include used by make... GNU
checking for gcc... gcc
checking for C compiler default output... a.out
checking whether the C compiler works... yes
checking whether we are cross compiling... no
checking for suffix of executables...
checking for suffix of object files... o
checking whether we are using the GNU C compiler... yes
checking whether gcc accepts -g... yes
checking for gcc option to accept ANSI C... none needed
checking dependency style of gcc... gcc3
checking build system type... i686-pc-linuxnfigure with alsa-utils
checking host system type... i686-pc-linux
checking for ld used by GCC... /usr/bin/ld
checking if the linker (/usr/bin/ld) is GNU ld... yes
checking for shared library run path origin... /bin/sh: ./config.rpath: No such file or directory
done
checking whether NLS is requested... yes
checking for GNU gettext in libc... yes
checking whether to use NLS... yes
checking where the gettext function comes from... libc
checking for cross-compiler... gcc
checking for gcc... (cached) gcc
checking whether we are using the GNU C compiler... (cached) yes
checking whether gcc accepts -g... (cached) yes
checking for gcc option to accept ANSI C... (cached) none needed
checking dependency style of gcc... (cached) gcc3
checking for a BSD-compatible install... /usr/bin/install -c
checking whether ln -s works... yes
checking for ALSA CFLAGS...
checking for ALSA LDFLAGS... -lasound -lm -ldl -lpthread
checking for libasound headers version >= 1.0.9... found.
checking for snd_ctl_open in -lasound... yes
checking how to run the C preprocessor... gcc -E
checking for egrep... grep -E
checking for ANSI C header files... yes
checking for initscr in -lncurses... no
checking for initscr in -lcurses... no
configure: error: this packages requires a curses library
debian:/usr/src/alsa/alsa-utils-1.0.9a# make
make: *** No targets specified and no makefile found. Stop.