I just installed RedHat Linux 7.1, and I can't hear any sound. Sadly, my knowledge in this area (I'm new to Linux) is nil, so I need some detailed instructions if anyone has them. I think the problem might be that the card is not supported. If this is the case, is there any hope? Thanks.

What sound card is it?

Try running "sndconfig"

Just in case, the default of some of the mixers, depending on KDE or Gnome, is for sound to be muted. Under the multimedia option in the menu tab (either KDE or Gnome), choose whatever is the mixer (if it appears, which it might not if you haven't got the drivers loaded. In which case...

First off is to figure out what sound card you have, or more to the point, what chipset it is. From the command line:

lspci

This is hoping that you have a newer puter and the machine is pci based (almost definately anything post 98-ish).

Also, if you could post back here the output of another fun command:

lsmod

Luck,

Finegan

Alright - results:

When I ran sndconfig, it told me I had a Rockwell International Card, and that is wasn't supported.

When I ran lspci, it told me that my Multimedia Audio Controller, Communication Controller, and Input Device Controller were all unknown devices by Rockwell International, and were followed by 4310, 4311, and 4312 respectively. There was other information there, did I pull the right stuff?

When I ran lsmod, it gave me this:

Module Size Used By
soundcore 4464 0 (autoclean)
agpgart 23392 4 (autoclean)
autofs 11264 1 (autoclean)
ipchains 38976 0 (unused)
usb-uhci 20720 0 (unused)
usbcore 49664 1 [usb-uhci]
vfat 9360 1
fat 32640 0 [vfat]
loop 9088 2


Does any of that help? Let me know if you need any other information. Thanks

P.S. Sorry - After I submitted the thread, I saw that the table didn't maintain spaces. Can you still make sense out of that?

The only information I can find on rockwell sound cards leads me to believe that its a clone of something, but an ensoniq, a soundblaster, I don't know what.

Unsupported just means sndconfig, which is a wizard, couldn't find it, it doesn't mean its unsupported. Although this does look like a weird card. You could try, and don't be surprised if the kernel panics and the machine locks...

cd /lib/modules/2.4.7-10/kernel/drivers/sound

and then modprobe everything you see, and what doesn't error, will probably work. Of course, that's the shotgun approach, but for just about the first time I can't find a thing on google. To find out everything you can about this card, you may want to try:

cat /proc/pci

Which is all of the information reported off of the board.

Luck,

Finegan

i'm having the same problem, kinda. it shows my sound card (CMedia inegrated 8783) but, i still can't hear any sounds. where's the mute control at? is there anything else i could try? where's the archiver in mandrake? or whats the konsole commands to unzip? thanks

Brand new sound card? Or is it really a CM 8738, and you just had the last 2 numbers inverted. Anyway, at a guess that its just another in a long line of cmedia chipsets that I've never had the experience of playing with myself, from the command line, as root:

modprobe soundcore
modprobe cmpci

Mandrake, however, uses the alsa drivers set if I last remember. Is that the distro you're talking about, or is it Phat, like it says on your member ID? If Mandy, the above won't work... well, actually it probably will. I haven't played with modprobing normal kernel sound on a machine that was set up to use ALSA. The worst that can really happen is a kernel panic and the machine locks up.

The mute control is under, if this is KDE or Gnome, the menu tab, multimedia, (whatever) mixer...

The archiver in mandrake? It should have a number of RPM based package managers.

to unpack a tar.gz or a .tgz from the command line:

tar xvzf package.tar.gz

Cheers,

Finegan

I can't get my sound card to work either. I have an Avance Logic card (ALS4000). HardDrake does recognize the card, but I don't hear anything

I haven't tried your suggestions yet, but I looked on the internet and most of the sites I've seen say the ALS4000 isn't supported.

If you can find something called the Sound Mixer in the K Menu (I assume your using KDE) click on that and it'll bring up a mixer panel, from there on you should be able to figure out how it works (if not, just ask).

If your talking about GUI archiver, you should find it somewhere K Menu (if your using KDE) organised under archiving or something similar.

unzip is the konsole/console command to extract files from zip files. First make sure it's installed though.

finegan-
you were right about the chipset, just a typo, and the two commands produce nothing. i'm under root, and they don't return any messages. i have the archiver, thanks for your help everyone. i can't find any mixer. but the drivers are type 10 ALSA drivers but for midi and synth devices it says 'NOT ENABLED IN CONFIG' at the bottom under the mixers section it says '0: C-Media PCI. this sound problem is really getting to me. and by the way, i have mandy 8.2