Getting sound (with ALSA) to work with Slackware 10.1

gustavderdrache · 03-27-2005, 09:37 AM

Help! I've been trying to get any sound of my box for a few days, now...

I've been reading various things online, trying to get it work... alsaconf says i have a via8233 card and sets it up, but nothing plays even when i set all the volume in alsamixer to 100%. Where do I go next?

comprookie2000 · 03-27-2005, 10:05 AM

What are you trying to play,a cd a mp3 or you using xmms,etc.

gustavderdrache · 03-27-2005, 10:07 AM

Right now, i'm just trying to play an mp3 file I made on my other computer, just to get sound working. I ran it through aplay, noatun, and Kaboodle. No sound came from any of them....

futhark · 03-27-2005, 10:11 AM

What exactly are the symptoms of "this thing does not work"?

In FC3 I have struggled quite a bit with Alsa. After I selected this output in XMMS, I could play files but I wouldn't hear anything. Sound would kick in after an alsactl restore. Eventually I have found the real solution was to disable the sound server in KDE (odd?).

Good luck!

gustavderdrache · 03-27-2005, 10:42 AM

When I say 'not working', I mean that there's no sound output despite using all the sound players I can find.

I haven't tried XMMS, I'll try that before I go into the settings again. How would I get the 'alsactl restore' you were talking about?

Haiyadragon · 03-27-2005, 01:08 PM

How about non-mp3 sound? Do you hear system sounds and stuff like that? Open the control center, Sound & Multimedia -> Sound System; is "Enable the sound system" checked? If so, go to the hardware tab. What audio device is selected? Try selecting "Advanced Linux Sound Architecture" (alsa).

jschiwal · 03-27-2005, 01:29 PM

If you su to root, can you hear sound by cat'ing a file to >/dev/dsp? If so, make sure that you are a member of the audio group.

gustavderdrache · 03-27-2005, 02:57 PM

I tried the Control Center settings, fiddled around, but nothing's worked. And then I su'd to root and tried cat'ing a text file I found in my directory:

cat lspci.txt > /dev/dsp

but no sound came out. And yeah, I've tried both a .wav and a .mp3 file, neither plays. And if the system is beeping at me, I completely missed it.

comprookie2000 · 03-27-2005, 09:26 PM

what happens when you do as root

Code:

modprobe snd-via82xx

and do you have something like this in modules.conf

Code:

-->
alias char-major-116 snd
alias snd-card-0 snd-via82xx
# module options should go here
# OSS/Free portion
alias char-major-14 soundcore
alias sound-slot-0 snd-card-0
# card #1
alias sound-service-0-0 snd-mixer-oss
alias sound-service-0-1 snd-seq-oss
alias sound-service-0-3 snd-pcm-oss
alias sound-service-0-8 snd-seq-oss
alias sound-service-0-12 snd-pcm-oss
#-->

gustavderdrache · 03-27-2005, 10:23 PM

Here's my modules.conf file, the whole thing:

Code:

# --- BEGIN: Generated by ALSACONF, do not edit. ---
# --- ALSACONF verion 1.0.8 ---
alias char-major-116 snd
alias char-major-14 soundcore
alias sound-service-0-0 snd-mixer-oss
alias sound-service-0-1 snd-seq-oss
alias sound-service-0-3 snd-pcm-oss
alias sound-service-0-8 snd-seq-oss
alias sound-service-0-12 snd-pcm-oss
alias snd-card-0 snd-via82xx
alias sound-slot-0 snd-via82xx
# --- END: Generated by ALSACONF, do not edit.---

I ran modprobe snd-via82xx and got nothing. I tried playing some sound files and didn't get any sound played, so I'm guessing that something is still wrong.

futhark · 03-28-2005, 09:38 AM

Oh BTW I was wrong saying I had disabled the sound server in KDE. It is in KMIX I had disabled the "restore settings on startup" option. I don't know why but KMIX was messing up my mixer settings.

I was asking what were the exact symptoms because I experienced two myself:
- Permission denied to sound devices. Leads to pretty specific error popups in apps. Fixed by changing permissions.
- XMMS actually playing the songs, but no sound output is generated. Was a mixer problem.

Someone suggested to have a look at /dev/dsp. ALSA devices are actually in /dev/snd. You may want to check if you have appropriate permissions on these , eg 666. In Fedora3 they've added support for udev. This udev thing is responsible of setting default permissions on devices. You may want to see if you have /etc/udev/permissions.d/50-udev.permissions in SUSE.

"alsactl" is an utility bundled with ALSA. It's to restore or save settings into the config file. If you run "alsactl restore" as root it'll restore the mixer settings. You may want to try the following in text mode (init 3) before and after using alsactl:
locate .wav
aplay somewav

gustavderdrache · 03-28-2005, 10:04 AM

My problem is that nothing's playing, I set the permissions of /dev/snd to 0666 and I'm still not getting any sound. XMMS will play my song (but give me a message about its shared library), but no sound comes out. Same with aplay, Kaboodle, and Noatun. I'm stumped at this point, folks.

DeusExLinux · 03-28-2005, 01:24 PM

this is going to sound really dumb, but here goes (it stumped me for a bit cause it was so obvious)

When you run alsamixer, your sound levels might be up all the way, but are they unmuted? (if so, press m when highlighting master,pcm, and whatever other ones you want to unmute....)

gustavderdrache · 03-28-2005, 03:53 PM

Heh, yeah, I've been through alsamixer a few times and I believe that the master volume is unmuted. Ah, well, it was a good suggestion.

gustavderdrache · 03-28-2005, 04:18 PM

Well, I just booted up the KDE and got a message from artsmessage that it couldn't open the sound driver because it didn't have proper permission. Now what do I do?