Strange sound problem after installing Gnome
 

I am using Knoppix 3.8. I installed Gnome 2.10 and removed kde 3.3 completely. Every thing works fine except sound. The system sounds does work, Totam also works, and even when I move the mouse on an mp3 file the music starts playing but xmms does not work and gives me the following message:
Please check that:

Your soundcard is configured properly
You have the correct output plugin selected
No other program is blocking the soundcard

. Moreover, the sound applet does not start and got the following message:
No volume control elements and/or devices found.
I ran alsaconf but did not help. After searching and reading some posts here I blacklisted snd_intel8x0m ran alsaconf and restarted X, I got the sound volume applet to work and its error message to disapear. But still xmms and also realplayer do not work.

After reboot, I have to run alsaconf again even that I did: alsactl store. Here are the results of lsmod before and after alsaconf:
--------------------------Before alsaconf--------------------
root@box:/home/knoppix# lsmod | grep snd
snd_intel8x0 30400 0
snd_ac97_codec 68088 1 snd_intel8x0
snd_pcm_oss 47904 0
snd_pcm 77828 3 snd_intel8x0,snd_ac97_codec,snd_pcm_oss
snd_timer 23684 1 snd_pcm
snd_page_alloc 11268 2 snd_intel8x0,snd_pcm
snd_mixer_oss 18688 1 snd_pcm_oss
snd 46308 6 snd_intel8x0,snd_ac97_codec,snd_pcm_oss,snd_pcm,snd_timer,snd_mixer_oss
soundcore 11104 3 snd,i810_audio
root@box:/home/knoppix#
--------------------------After---------------------------
snd_intel8x0 30400 2
snd_ac97_codec 68088 1 snd_intel8x0
snd_pcm_oss 47904 1
snd_mixer_oss 18688 1 snd_pcm_oss
snd_pcm 77828 3 snd_intel8x0,snd_ac97_codec,snd_pcm_oss
snd_timer 23684 1 snd_pcm
snd 46308 8 snd_intel8x0,snd_ac97_codec,snd_pcm_oss,snd_mixer_oss,snd_pcm,snd_timer
soundcore 11104 2 snd
snd_page_alloc 11268 2 snd_intel8x0,snd_pcm
r

Can any body help?

Gnome uses ESD. Make sure you choose the right output plugin in XMMS. It must be 'eSound output plugin'. Choose it in Preferences > Output plugin section.

Hope it helps!

(BTW, does Rhythmbox work?)

exit3219

Thanks alot for a quick one. Yes, it did work, I am enjoying my favorite song now. How about Realplayer and the sound volume applet? I mean how can I make them work without alsaconf after every boot?

Put 'alsactl store' and 'alsactl restore' in your init scripts, to load the appropriate mixer settings automatically when U boot.

exit3219

Thanks for reply. However, I do not know how to put them in the init. Would you plese tell me how?

I think it is enough to do a 'alsaconf' and set the mixer using alsamixer. After you have done that, you use the command 'alsactl store'. This will save the settings. Normally, it will reload these settings automatically when you boot (as you can see in '/etc/init.d', there are alsa daemons that startup at boot).

Good luck!

Yeah, what McCloud said is true. BTW, what distro do you use? Most of them create the init scripts you need by default.

Thanks for reply.

Yes. there is a file in /etc/init.d for alsa, but it fails to start alsa during PC bootup due to a conflict with esound. I removed the esound package and got all media programs working very well without blacklisting any module, but I lost Gnome sounds which seems to need esound. Is there a way to get Gnome sounds to use alsa instead of esound?

I am using knoppix 3.8. I have installed gnome 2.10 and removed kde.

I have followed the procedure shown in this thread:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...70#post1767970

and got every thing working fine except realplayer. But, I got it workig from the command line as follows:

> realplay

Can some one help here?

By the way, only sound is not working in realplayer. Video is working fine in all cases.

Realplayer is not my forte, sorry. Maybe it's like XMMS, you just have to select the right sound output module?
Anyway, I don't know for sure.