I have a Creative SoundBlaster X-FI sound card (Model # SB0460) that works great in Windows XP (after installing the Windows device driver), so I know there are no defects in the card. However, I am having an extremely hard time trying to get it to work in Ubuntu 12.04. Actually, I started with Ubuntu 10.10, and liked that version much better than the current versions. Since 10.10 was no longer supported, I had to move on to a newer version, and thinking it would be best to I had the most recent version, which is 13.04, I downloaded and installed that version, not realizing that support on it would be very short term. I had trouble at first trying to get my sound card to work, and I believe the commands that made it work were 'make' and 'make install' on the command line of the Terminal Window (from the README file in the unzipped files in the driver download, which is 'XFiDrv_Linux_Public_US_1.00.tar.gz'). I copied the sound driver zipped file to the /dev/snd directory, which is the directory where it worked before. The website I got the driver download from is 'www.mxdatarecovery.net/driversdownload/creative-labs-sb0460-model-sound.html'. Since I wanted the long term support (LTS), I decided to download and install 12.04. Using the 'make' and 'make install' commands again, I got it working in my first installation of 12.04.
However, I needed to make the LAMP (Apache, MySQL, PHP, & PHPMyAdmin) work to successfully work on my website. But I tried a method of installation I got from a website, and never could get it to work. I then tried the simple 'apt-get-install <Program Name>' method, and could not get PHP to work. It seemed to me that my 12.04 installation was too messed up from the initial load of the LAMP installation that I would not be able to undo the 'damage', so I decided to re-install 12.04 again, which I did.
Before installing the sound card driver, I checked to be sure 12.04 recognized my card. On the Terminal command line, I input 'alsamixer', and got the display of that program. I noticed that the first vertical bar (Master) and the last vertical bar (Digital) had '46<>46' underneath it, where all of the other bars had '100<>100>' beneath them. Also, the first and last vertical bars had only green coloring in them that went only about half-way up the bars, and all the other vertical bars had white up to about 35% of those bars, and then red coloring up to about 15% of those other bars near the top of those bars. That did not seem right to me; I think they should all show '100<>100' underneath the vertical bars. Also, when I pressed F6 to select the sound card, and selected 'Creative X-FL', then pressed Enter, quit the program, and then went back into it, the selection went back to the 'default' selection. So it wasn't retaining my card selection. Then I tried inputting 'lspci | grep audio' at the Terminal command line, and it returned '03:00.0 Multimedia audio controller: Creative Labs SB X-Fi'; so it recognized my sound card – good feedback.
Then very strange events began to happen. Whereas the 'make' and 'make install' worked on the previous 12.04 installation, it produced error messages on this installation, as follows:
root@user-System-Product-Name:/dev/snd/XFiDrv_Linux_Public_US_1.00# make
make -C /lib/modules/3.5.0-23-generic/build M=/dev/snd/XFiDrv_Linux_Public_US_1.00
make[1]: Entering directory `/usr/src/linux-headers-3.5.0-23-generic'
LD /dev/snd/XFiDrv_Linux_Public_US_1.00/built-in.o
CC [M] /dev/snd/XFiDrv_Linux_Public_US_1.00/xfi.o
/dev/snd/XFiDrv_Linux_Public_US_1.00/xfi.c:14:26: fatal error: sound/driver.h: No such file or directory
compilation terminated.
make[2]: *** [/dev/snd/XFiDrv_Linux_Public_US_1.00/xfi.o] Error 1
make[1]: *** [_module_/dev/snd/XFiDrv_Linux_Public_US_1.00] Error 2
make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/linux-headers-3.5.0-23-generic'
make: *** [all] Error 2
root@user-System-Product-Name:/dev/snd/XFiDrv_Linux_Public_US_1.00# make install
Copy module files...
cp: cannot stat `ctxfi.ko': No such file or directory
make: *** [install] Error 1
The error seems to start with the 'make' command being unable to find 'sound/driver.h', and then with the 'make install' command being unable to find the 'ctxfi.ko' file. And when I do a 'find' on the entire Ubuntu disk, these files are not there. But I can see where they are called from the 'Makefile' file from the unzipped driver file. Should some other programs be run first to supply these files? So many questions – with no answers that work. There has to be a cause and effect relationship that will make this work, but I have been unable to find what works.
Then when I log off or shut down, and then reboot back into Ubuntu, the sound driver files are no longer there; they are automatically deleted, and that has happened several times since I have been trying to resolve this problem for quite a while now. THAT SHOULD NOT HAPPEN UNLESS I DELETE THEM!!! In addition, the permissions on the /dev/snd directories change, and I have to 'chmod' them at the Terminal to be able to copy the sound driver over again. Up to this point, 12.04 has proven to me to be much more unreliable than 10.10.
The bottom line is that if no one can help me resolve this soon, I will strongly be considering trying a different Linux, perhaps Red Hat/Fedora, CentOS, or any other I choose after doing more research. If one of you have a good recommendation for a different Linux, I would appreciate your response.
As a related side note, I feel quite disgusted with being forced to stop using Ubuntu 10.10 since it was more reliable, and much easier and much more user friendly than 12.04 or 13.04. 10.10 was similar to Windows XP, which in my experience, has been the most user friendly version of Windows, whereas I feel Windows 7 was a poor choice on Microsoft's part, and was, in my opinion, not near as user friendly as XP. It wouldn't be so bad to move to more recent versions, but the Ubuntu developers have tried to mimic Windows 7, which I feel was a very unfortunate decision for Ubuntu users.
Any competent and reliable help on this problem will be greatly appreciated.
aplusguy333
