I just upgraded to Suse 9.1 after only having 9.0 installed for a short short while.

Anyway, I have no sound now for some reason. As soon as I start Yast and then go to configure the card, it pops up a display saying "The number of currently running cards doesn't match the number of configured cards in your configuration files. Try to restart sound system?" I click yes and nothing works still. Then go into the next page and it shows my sound card as not running but lists it. So I click options but I haven't got a clue for any settings there as everything requires a number but doesn't describe what each number is for. Then the card itself requires a number entered but it says at the bottom that its values are unkown.

When I try to change the sound device to alsa or oss it returns the following message:

My hardware specs are all well listed in the link here - w.pcpitstop.com/techexpress.asp?id=VZ6QAWYP64MS9SKX

My soundcard is onboard sound built into my MSI Neo2-Fisr motherboard. Here is a link to the board and all the specs on the sound and other such - w.msicomputer.com/product/p_spec.asp?model=865PE_Neo2-FIS2R&class=mb

Sorry for all the links. It wouldn't let me post them and I needed the links to allow for more information on my setup.

Anyway, I'm quite new to the Linux world but would like to at least understand things and exactly what I'm doing. But for now, I'm unsure of different commands and how they're issued and which of the command prompts to even use. Being a normal Windows user, there's only one command prompt and I've managed to learn that one fairly well and quite simple. All of my MySQL databases are built directly from the command prompt. Just things aren't clicking for me in Linux yet and I was hoping someone could offer some information on this issue.

Thanks,
Brandon

For those of you having trouble with the partial links, add http://ww before the posted link fragment and it will work.

I take it that you do not have a secondary sound card, but are just using the onboard one?

When you upgraded SuSE, you did an actual upgrade, and not a clean install?

What seems to have happened (from the limited information you've given-- not your fault), is that the upgrade process added the sound card again, rather than replacing the old one (which would explain why the number of configured sound cards does not match the number of sound cards you actually have). The other possiblility (which is kind of part of the same thing) is that when you upgraded to a 2.6 series kernel (which SuSE 9.1 uses, whereas SuSE 9.0 uses a 2.4 series kernel), the changes in the kernel with regard to sound made some of the settings that worked for the old kernel invalid. Now that I think of it, this is what happened to me the first time I installed a 2.6 series kernel.

From experience, I can assure you that it's a bit tedious to fix, but not a big deal ultimately. My problem in assisting you to fix it is that I don't know much about how SuSE does things differently from other distros, but I can help you with the basics and maybe a SuSE user will come along and offer more SuSE-specific tips.

OK, we know that your sound card is detected, but presumably the module for it has not loaded. So we should check that first.

The first thing you want to do is open a terminal and type lsmod, then copy the output and post it here.

The second thing you want to do is open up a text editor, open the file /etc/modules.conf (it will open read-only, but that doesn't matter) and post the contents here.

As for the terminal...
There's only one command prompt in Linux too...OK, that's wrong, there are two. There's the login shell and the interactive shell, but really, for all intents and purposes the two are so interoperable that a normal user doesn't have to worry about the differences during daily use.

Which of the command prompts to even use? I don't even know what you mean by this, sorry. A Linux user has a variety of terminal emulation programs available (unlike Windows, where there's pretty much only one "DOS box"), from which s/he can run command-line commands, but it's hard to think that that's what you mean, as a terminal is a terminal is a terminal. You may have a "Run..." box available, but just like in Windows, that's just a single-command mini-terminal in a pretty GUI box. The only significantly different terminal access is the one gained by switching to a different virtual console via the CTRL+Alt+F* command and using that for a second login without X, but it's fairly unlikely that you're using that extensively at this point in your Linux career.

The main thing that a normal user uses the command line for is to gain root access via the su or su - command, and this might be the source of your confusion... many administrative commands/applications are not accessible to a normal user (not only that they won't run; you'll get a "command not found" error, even though you know the command exists because it's a base command or something). These commands can only be accessed by root. To save yourself having to log out and back in as root (which is generally not recommended; in fact it is so contra-indicated that most DMs-- login managers-- will not even display root as a possible login name), su and su - commands give a normal user temporary root access to the root-only commands.

For any commands that you don't understand, open a terminal and type man <command_name> to read the manual for that command. If there is no "man page" for a command, typing command_name --help will usually offer an explanation of the command syntax and a description of the various options for that command.

Hope this helps clear up your confusion, if not fix your sound card (yet) .

First off, thanks for the information. Wasn't actually expecting anyone to be friendly. Generally everything I've seen from Linux users is where if the new user doesn't seem to have sat down and studied Linux and read entire manuals then nobody wants to help them. Could be wrong impressions and stereotyping of course.

Now the sound card I'm using is onboard my MSI Neo-2 Fisr motherboard. As for Upgrading, I did a clean install. I'm now running Suse 9.1 Pro with the 2.6.4 kernel.

Here is the cut and paste from the terminal when I entered the command lsmod:
As for the contents inside of modules.conf, there are none. Not only that, I can't write in it either.

Thanks a lot for the help. I'll be reading the help commands to see if they begin to make any sense to me

Hi Brandon!

I'm also relatively new to Linux, but I too have recently upgraded from SuSE 9.0 to SuSE 9.1.

In the release notes, just when the installation process is about to complete, there are some release notes. One concerns the sound card. SuSE state that you need to reconfigure the sound card after upgrade as otherwise, as in your case, you won't get any sound.

What you need to do is re-initialize your sound card. Open your Terminal Program, switch to root user (command "su", then use your root password to authenticate), then type in "YaST2 sound help". It will give you all available options of command lines to start your card again. I used "Yast2 sound add", which will add your sound card to the hardware configuration. You can then test that it has worked by using the command "YaST2 sound playtest".

But in your case it seems you already have the sound card configured more than once - or maybe both your mobo soundcard and your video card's sound are configured. Use the same approach in tackling your problem, but use the "YaST2 sound help" command to get the correct option to re-configure sound on your system. Only after that you can set up your sound in the Control Center to use a specific sound module.

This is what YaST should show under the general help options. You can then type in the desired command and again type "help" at the end to see more options:

YaST Configuration Module sound
--------------------------------

Sound card configuration module.

Basic Syntax:
yast2 sound interactive
yast2 sound <command> [verbose] [options]
yast2 sound help
yast2 sound longhelp
yast2 sound <command> help

Commands:
add Add sound card. Without parameters, add first one detected.
modules List all available sound kernel modules.
playtest Play test sound on given sound card
remove Remove sound cards
set Set the new values for given card parameters
show Show the information of given sound card
summary Configuration summary of sound cards

Run 'yast2 sound <command> help' for a list of available options.
-------------------------------------------------

Try to remove your soundcard, then add it back if you no longer have any sound card configuration after that. Then test your sound card.

Please post any strange or confusing messages on this thread and we'll try to help you sort it out!
You can easily copy and paste the messages in the Shell Terminal.

Good luck and I hope this helps to get your sound problem fixed!

Terri

Thanks for the reply. Unfortunately, nothing is adding up to me. I turned on the computer today and still had no sound. After reading motub's reply, I looked in YaST and found that the sound card now displayed as running and all I did was turn the computer back on.

After trying what you've said, I basically got nowhere. The command yast2 sound help worked but yast2 sound add returned an error. Yast2 sound playtest did nothing.

I've taken screenshots instead of posting lengthy information on the board to make it a bit easier to understand.

http://www.graphics-tech.com/storage/snapshot01.png
http://www.graphics-tech.com/storage/snapshot02.png
http://www.graphics-tech.com/storage/snapshot03.png
http://www.graphics-tech.com/storage/snapshot04.png
http://www.graphics-tech.com/storage/snapshot05.png
http://www.graphics-tech.com/storage/snapshot06.png

Hopefully these screenshots will help.

Hi Brandon!

Sorry you're still having trouble with your sound!

From the Terminal output after trying to add a sound card, I think the error message just simply confirms that your sound card has already been detected, so the fact it states that you need to specify kernel module for a sound card just means YaST thinks you're trying to add a different card it was unable to auto-detect. As this is not the case, ignore that message.

What does the command "yast2 sound summary" return? it should show something like this:

linux:/home/terri # yast2 sound summary



* SB Audigy
* Configured as snd-card-0.

linux:/home/terri #

Please note I'm using a Sound Blaster card, so yours should come up as AC'97 instead of SB Audigy.
From your second screen shot I take your sound is configured as snd-card-0. This looks pretty much okay.

On your next screenshot, snapshot03, some values have been set whereas my sound card has no values listed (possible value: not known is normal and shows up for my system as well). I am unfutunately not experienced enough to interpret if your settings are still okay at this point. Hopefully Holly (motub) or some other user with more experience can help out and shed some more light where I'm not able to.

On snapshot04, your sound level, particularily for playback, seem very low (or in case of playback, 0). Have you tried to increase the output on the master settings? In particular, whack up volume of the mono master to 100 and then even at a low master setting you should have some output. Try the test sound and if you hear the organ music, you're home and dry!
At your current low settings, I can't get anything out of my soundcard, either. But with mono at 100 (PCM in case of my soundcard) and master control at 12, I can hear the organ test sound.

Again, on KAMix 0.0.7, everything looks fine, just on very low settings.

So, for the moment my suggestion is to increase the master output settings, in particular the mono setting, then try the test sound. If still nothing wants to co-operate, post again! I hope someone more experienced will then be able to help as I'm still a too!

Good luck!

Terri

Hi again LittleAngel. Yes, no sound is getting quite aggrevating. Almost ready to restart from scratch and do a clean install of Suse 9.0 Pro. Everything works there Anyway, here is the message returned after entering the command "yast2 sound summary":

As far as the sound values, trust me, I've tried nearly 100 different settings there changing things one by one and testing to no avail. I've tried changing settings in various mixers and players as well as the master control on the physical speakers themselves and still I get nothing.

Thank you though very much for trying to help.

Well, I've managed to solve my problem. Thanks for all the help. All I had to do was to open a terminal, type su and then type my password and hit enter. Then type alsaconf and let it configure the sound.

Phew!

Oh, I'm glad that you've finally managed to get it sorted out! Sorry I didn't think of alsaconf - glad you worked it out!

Terri

Amazing, isn't it? Linux does work if you know what to do . That's pretty much why the old-fashioned types tell you very rudely to RTFM, and we next-genners politely tell you to RTM . A year from now, you will see our point .

Because if you do what the manuals say, things tend to work .

Glad you got it fixed (really).

Thanks everyone. This would have all been avoided if I wasn't relying on someone elses information. I was told to type a command and relied on this very experienced users information and it cost me many hours. Being a very new user, I would have never known to type su before the command either. I don't quite understand that persons reply because it was quite incomplete and wrong at that.

Motub, no offense to your reply, but I've been thinking all day for comparison between Linux and Windows users. Today, there are 8 year olds starting to learn computers for the first time. They come online and figure out they like computers and such. One day, they finally run into a problem. Do you tell them to read the ****ing manual? Or do you give them a little bit of guided help? Well, if you're a linux user, it's possible. I've just never understood any point in someone posting on a forum and saying "Read the ****ing manual" and not trying to help. People do read the manuals but that doesn't always mean they understand them.

Now as a Windows user that has been volunteering at tech help forums for a good while only for Windows, I've noticed all sorts of comments to beginners. So I think of a scenario where someone is having problems with their video cards and getting poor results. A Windows user would tell them to uninstall and then reinstall the drivers and see if that helps. A linux user will ask if you've read the manual and maybe shrug you off if not and maybe not. If they don't, they will say check in directory etc/blah and see if the driver is there.

Now.. that driver is there. But how can a normal user know without knowing what the driver name is? True, Windows users will never tell you the driver name as there isn't a need for it. But yourself having to rebuild an engine in the middle of a dessert and all you have is a phone and nobody to help physically. You ask how to do something and someone says "Check to see if the part is there". Do you know what they're talking about? No. Humans aren't psychic so you would need to know what it looks like and maybe even the name of it just for future purposes for your memory.

I've always noticed that if a Windows user is truly willing to learn then they will. People will do everything they can to help them also. Documentation is written extremely well and in plain english and not 100% technical terms at all times. If you look at most Linux guides and books then it's quite horrific to new comers because nothing makes sense. Imagine yourself being 10 years old and finally knowing almost everything there is to know about English and then someone tell you to learn German and give you a book. This book contains no english terms and the person who gave you the book isn't willing to help but tells you to just read it. Are you going to want to learn or are you going to be flat out pissed and go with what you know?

Anyway... I fully intend to learn Linux with/without the help of others. Depending on how many times I'm told to read the ****ing manual depends on exactly how much faster I learn it.

Thanks for all the help. This post definitely doesn't pertain to you guys as you've been greatly helfpul and willing to offer advice. I'm just expecting a long and frustrating road to learning Linux especially when in need to ask for help.

By the way, I did read the manual. Not all 420 pages of the user guide and 567 pages of the adminstration guide but I did read it. Anything in either book I found (using the table of contents and index) related to sound said absolutely nothing about the command alsaconf or alsaconfig. I did find alsamixer but that did me no good either way.

So --- not trying to start a fight, just slightly confused--- what you're saying is that someone doing exactly what you wanted/expected (telling you to type a specific command) was not helpful to you (and in fact made things worse), but someone referring you to official documentation would be even less so, despite the fact that the whole idea of official documentation is that it would give the correct instructions, even if that documentation is difficult to read or understand?

Nope, don't get it. What good are easy-to-understand instructions if they're wrong?

Yes and yes. I tell them to read the manual, and I tell them where the manual is. Then I tell them that they can ask me about anything they don't understand in the manual. I am a firm believer in teaching a man/woman/child to fish rather than just handing them a fish, and if you search my posts (here and on other forums), you will see how many times I literally quote man pages to support instructions I'm giving (and help people get used to the idea of reading them).

I read manuals when I buy appartatuses. I read the manual that came with my car. I read my motherboard manual, even though I've assembled PCs for 10 years. I read the README, I read the Slackware Online book when I was running Slackware, and I read the Gentoo Handbook now when I run into problems. And I read man pages, because I had a "crazy" idea when I was just starting out with Linux-- I wanted to try different distros but I'm impatient, so I wanted to do it all at once, so I wanted to create what I called The Massive Multiboot containing 5 Linux distros and 2 versions of Windows, all booting on one box and also sharing files between both each distro and Windows (my mail) and between each distro and the other distros (the Neverwinter Nights install is 2GB before savegames; I was not going to install it 5 times to play it under all the distros).

At the time, I didn't even know if this was possible, and I certainly didn't know how to do it. I was honestly amazed when I actually read man mount very thoroughly and found that it gave me all the tools to do accomplish this. It is possible, and apparently not "crazy" at all-- since the designers of the filesystem have built this capability into it, they must have expected that someone might have this need/desire. The HOW-TO detailing how I turned the man page info into a working multiboot can be found here, if you're interested.

But that's when I learned that man pages are not Windows Help-- they actually tell you how to do the stuff you're trying to do, so one should read them.

Well, if you've read your manual that came with the part , or looked on the box, or in Windows' Device Manager, or something, you should know the model number of the part. A Google search for model_number driver linux will usually lead you to the name of the Linux driver. This is also faster than waiting for someone who has the same part in their box (and thus knows the driver name) to see and answer your post. Because, as you say, humans are not psychic and it's fairly unlikely that I (for example) am going to know the driver names for parts that I don't personally have in my box unless they're very common and I've heard a lot about them (which is how I know that emuk101 is the Soundblaster Live driver, even though I don't have one).

This is actually funny to me, because I am (now) 40 and 3.66 years ago I moved to another country, where I was required to learn another language in order to live (I'm American by birth). The government does send you to school to learn Dutch, and the school was quite good, but basically you are given the materials in Dutch and you have to learn to read them. Admittedly, the computer program component of the early stages did feature multi-lingual translations of what the characters were saying in Dutch. And of course you have to do things like go to the store, the post office, the train or bus station, and nobody there is putting all the signs and information in Dutch and English and Russian and Arabic and German and French-- it's in Dutch. And I'm not the kind of person who's going to be stopping a stranger (or even a friend) every 5 seconds to ask, "what does thus-and-so mean?" Furthermore, the Dutch are not overwhelmingly helpful in this regard; on the one hand, as soon as they discover that you speak English, they want to practice their English with you, rather than helping you learn Dutch; and on the other hand, they're generally extremely self-reliant, and not particularly fond of holding your hand as if you're a baby when you're a competent adult.

So while you might have thought that this might squeak by as a general example, I actually have personal experience with this very situation. And yes, it pissed me off. Not just me, either. Pretty much everybody at TaalSchool (Language School, for NT2, or Dutch as a Second Language) was pretty pissed off. A lot of people just refused to even come to school (dropped out)-- and don't forget, this was a legal requirement of our residency in The Netherlands.

But as you say "if a (Windows user) is truly willing to learn then they will." We were not so willing, but we were required to learn, and had a desperate need to do so (my future mother-in-law, for example, does not speak much English, and my fiance's grandmother does not speak any-- so I could not get to know my own family if I did not learn).

And so I learned a lot about learning hard things that are in many ways unteachable (as are many aspects of language, since they are based on culture, which you cannot be taught).

And the first thing I learned is that you have to have a reason. Should I ever get my Windows-To-Linux Migration Help website up, that's the first thing it will say: Know why you are doing this. Because learning to use a whole other operating system is not dissimilar from learning another language that you really must know and understand in order to live your daily life, and frankly, it's a complete PITA more often than not. If you don't have some driving reason to do so, that will keep you at it when you just can't take it anymore... then you won't keep at it and will suffer whatever consequences ensue (you won't be cool, you must put up with MS' further activation and proprietary file format restrictions, you have to live with the BSODs). Whatever. But the point is, to be "willing to learn", as you put it, you have to have a reason that makes you willing. It also helps a lot to consciously know what that reason is.

The second thing I learned was to use the materials that are provided to teach you-- which brings us back to "read the man pages". If I am "willing" to learn Dutch, it's just flat stupid for me not to study the grammar textbook I am given, and the situation when learning Linux is not particularly different. Why else do you think the information is given to you? Teachers (and unofficial tech help forums like this) are provided to help explain parts of the material that are beyond the comprehension of an individual "student", but we are here to help you (which implies that you yourself are actively doing something), not to telepathically transfer all understanding of Linux into your head (which, in the case of Dutch, I wish someone would or could, believe me). Teachers (or other helpful persons) do not have much respect for so-called "students" who make no effort on their own behalf.... and teachers at least get paid. We don't. And after a while, "very experienced users" have seen a whole lot of lazy/ignorant/non-technical/inexperienced people (any given "annoying n00b" may be any combination of the preceding) who basically show up screaming and waving their hands about (because they don't even know anything about Netiquette), expecting -- no, demanding-- "service" for free, to commercial standards (meaning they demand the level of service they would receive if they were paying someone for it), without them having to lift a finger, read a word, learn how to use Google (which is frankly an essential Linux tool), or pretty much anything.

Believe me, after a few legions of such users, it becomes hard to remain polite, if you're not naturally inclined that way. But just because you tell the truth rudely doesn't mean you're not telling the truth-- and the truth is, that Linux is built on a fundamental philosophy that assumes that you are capable of reading the copious documentation that is provided with it (although you may have more trouble finding where the copious documentation is scattered around), and that you will do so, given that the very act of installing Linux, indicates a "willingness to learn", especially if you're migrating from another OS.