mplayer won't compile with alsa support

I'm trying to compile mplayer with support for alsa. It doesn't seem to detect alsa running here, although I could play mp3 files with alsa and xmms ok.
If I just ./configure, it will not enable alsa, using oss instead. As I don't run oss, I don't have any sound output (null). If I force alsa (./configure --enable-alsa, according to "./configure --help"), its like i didn't use any switch. The output is the exact same.

When playing, it gives "Couldn't open /dev/dsp: no such file or dir...etc..." But dsp is in there!

I even tried to relink /dev/dsp to /dev/dsp1, instead of dsp0, which was the original. It gave me a crappy sound, but mplayer reported successfully opened oss audio.

The sound card is via82xx. xmms can play sound with alsa. Tvtime can play tv with it. mplayer complains.

What can I do?

Running Debian sarge, kernel 2.6.8-1-k7.

My entire lsmod:


Module Size Used by
tuner 19920 0
bttv 154316 0
ipv6 262340 15
af_packet 22600 2
via_rhine 21576 0
mii 5184 1 via_rhine
crc32 4352 1 via_rhine
snd_via82xx 29604 1
snd_ac97_codec 69572 1 snd_via82xx
gameport 4736 1 snd_via82xx
snd_mpu401_uart 8000 1 snd_via82xx
snd_rawmidi 25380 1 snd_mpu401_uart
snd_seq_device 8264 1 snd_rawmidi
ehci_hcd 31364 0
uhci_hcd 32784 0
usbcore 118308 4 ehci_hcd,uhci_hcd
sata_via 7492 0
libata 41348 1 sata_via
scsi_mod 124748 1 libata
snd_bt87x 14536 1
snd_pcm_oss 54312 0
snd_mixer_oss 19904 3 snd_pcm_oss
snd_pcm 97480 3 snd_via82xx,snd_bt87x,snd_pcm_oss
snd_timer 25540 1 snd_pcm
snd 57380 10 snd_via82xx,snd_ac97_codec,snd_mpu401_uart,snd_rawmidi,snd_seq_device,snd_bt87x,snd_pcm_oss,snd_mixe r_oss,snd_pcm,snd_timer
snd_page_alloc 11720 3 snd_via82xx,snd_bt87x,snd_pcm
video_buf 22212 1 bttv
i2c_algo_bit 9800 1 bttv
v4l2_common 6208 1 bttv
btcx_risc 4808 1 bttv
videodev 9984 1 bttv
soundcore 10400 4 bttv,snd
pci_hotplug 34352 0
via_agp 9088 1
agpgart 34536 1 via_agp
parport_pc 35328 0
parport 41544 1 parport_pc
floppy 60304 0
pcspkr 3688 0
evdev 9600 0
dm_mod 59580 0
capability 4616 0
commoncap 7296 1 capability
w83627hf 29060 0
eeprom 7816 0
i2c_sensor 2944 2 w83627hf,eeprom
i2c_isa 2048 0
i2c_viapro 7116 0
i2c_core 24144 8 tuner,bttv,i2c_algo_bit,w83627hf,eeprom,i2c_sensor,i2c_isa,i2c_viapro
ide_cd 42528 0
cdrom 40284 1 ide_cd
rtc 12728 0
reiserfs 244880 7
ext2 71720 0
ext3 126760 0
jbd 61784 1 ext3
mbcache 9220 2 ext2,ext3
ide_generic 1472 0
ide_disk 19264 9
via82cxxx 14044 1
ide_core 138788 4 ide_cd,ide_generic,ide_disk,via82cxxx
unix 28596 234
font 8448 0
vesafb 6688 0
cfbcopyarea 3776 1 vesafb
cfbimgblt 3072 1 vesafb
cfbfillrect 3712 1 vesafb


thanks for any help!

Ok this might sound kinda simplistic...but the permissions are correct on /dev/dsp right?

I think you sorta have OSS, as in the alsa OSS emulation layer. So its technically there. Oh did you check the alsa mixer settings? Just to make sure it's all unmuted?

Was there any other output while the configure was running that would give a clue as to why it couldn't find alsa?

Oh and I think thers a commandline switch for mplayer to make it use alsa. I forget what it is offhand, but the manpage should tell you. I think its -ao alsa. mplayer --help should give you some stuff too.

mplayer -ao help will tell you about the audio options.

Hi buaku, thanks for replying.


The perms for dsp are correct, I guess.

bruno@frank:/dev$ ls -l /dev/dsp*
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 9 2004-11-15 20:36 /dev/dsp -> /dev/dsp0
crw-rw---- 1 root audio 14, 3 2004-11-06 02:03 /dev/dsp0
crw-rw---- 1 root audio 14, 19 2004-11-06 02:03 /dev/dsp1
crw-rw---- 1 root audio 14, 35 2004-11-06 02:03 /dev/dsp2
crw-rw---- 1 root audio 14, 51 2004-11-06 02:03 /dev/dsp3
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 9 2004-11-06 02:03 /dev/dsp.bak -> /dev/dsp0
bruno@frank:/dev$


-ao help gives me:

"...
Reading config file /usr/local/etc/mplayer/mplayer.conf: No such file or directory
Reading config file /home/bruno/.mplayer/config
Available audio output drivers:
mpegpes DVB audio output
oss OSS/ioctl audio output
null Null audio output
pcm RAW PCM/WAVE file writer audio output
plugin Plugin audio output
"
no alsa, as you can see.


The alsa mixer channels are unmuted.
'
The mplayer man page shows nothing about cli switch to enable alsa. But even if it did, the current binary was compiled without support for it, as configure failed to detect it.

Any other ideas?

Do you NEED to compile it? Or can you grab a precompiled by adding:

deb ftp://ftp.nerim.net/debian-marillat/ unstable main

to your /etc/apt/sources.list

Hmm, seeing how you have snd_pcm_oss and snd_mixer_oss loaded (OSS emulation for ALSA), it's strange that mplayer would complain about not being able to open /dev/dsp. I don't experience any problems with e.g. Quake 3 (which uses OSS only, AFAIK).

That said, it's pretty easy to install all of the build dependencies for mplayer... well, if you upgrade to unstable anyways (marillat doesn't have a source directory for testing):

1. Add deb-src ftp://ftp.nerim.net/debian-marillat/ unstable main to /etc/apt/sources.list

2. Run apt-get update

3. Run apt-get build-dep mplayer -- you may need to resolve certain problems first, however. If you see something like this ...

# apt-get build-dep mplayer
Reading Package Lists... Done
Building Dependency Tree... Done
Package libdv-dev is a virtual package provided by:
  libdv2-dev 0.99-1
  libdv4-dev 0.103-1
You should explicitly select one to install.
E: Package libdv-dev has no installation candidate
E: Failed to satisfy Build-Depends dependency for mplayer: libdv-dev

... then you'll need to pick a specific package first (e.g. apt-get install libdv4-dev) and then try the build-dep command again.

Also, mplayer source (from tarballs and cvs) does come with a "debian" directory. This means that you can build an installable deb package from it (cd mplayer; chmod u+x debian/rules; fakeroot debian/rules binary). You can also add the marillat deb-src line and run apt-get source -b mplayer to accomplish the same thing.

Hi again!
It worked this time! Very happy, thank you all!
My marillat line at sources.list was actually pointing to stable, instead of unstable. Thanks for bringing me to this. I edited it, updated and I finally could be able to download an alsa-enabled mplayer!

I had even downgraded to oss... My via82xx sound chip works way better with alsa.

for future reference, I had the same problem, turned out i needed
sudo apt-get install libalut-dev libalut0

i also got libalsa-ocaml-dev but i don't think it has anything to do with that.