alsa drivers on sb live! problem

i've gone to the alsa page and followed the instructions to install (1) the alsa drivers, (2) the alsa libraries, and (3) the alsa utilities to get my sound card (sb live! that uses the emu10k1 driver in oss) to work using the alsa drivers. lo and behold, it does not work. i always get errors when running alsa utilities (the modules insert correctly) that give the impression that alsa has no clue how to access sound output on my computer:

alsamixer gives: alsamixer: function snd_ctl_open failed for default: No such file or directory

amixer gives: amixer: Mixer attach default error: No such file or directory

i have no leads on how to fix this, and i've spent quite a while looking for a solution using google, to no avail. lots of ppl have reported this problem, but i could find no solution in any discussion threads (not just on linuxquestions.org).

any information would be great, and if anybody knows of some other site that has a forum just for this, i'd love to know where that is.

thx for reading,
y-p

Are you root? If you have all the modules loaded:
lsmod
That it says to load, you should be able to pull up alsamixer (if the install of alsa-utils went well) as long as your root...

Cool

yeah, that's what i would have thought, but check it:

lsmod gives

Module Size Used by Not tainted
...
snd-emu10k1 74356 0 (unused)
snd-pcm 63200 0 [snd-emu10k1]
snd-timer 15460 0 [snd-pcm]
snd-hwdep 5216 0 [snd-emu10k1]
snd-util-mem 1296 0 [snd-emu10k1]
snd-page-alloc 6324 0 [snd-emu10k1 snd-pcm]
snd-rawmidi 14016 0 [snd-emu10k1]
snd-seq-device 4260 0 [snd-emu10k1 snd-rawmidi]
snd-ac97-codec 41496 0 [snd-emu10k1]
snd 31620 0 [snd-emu10k1 snd-pcm snd-timer snd-hwdep snd-util-mem snd-rawmidi snd-seq-device snd-ac97-codec]
soundcore 3876 2 [snd]
hostap_pci 35412 1
hostap 79140 0 [hostap_pci]
hostap_crypt 1488 0 [hostap]
ide-scsi 10448 0

and then as root i get the same stuff w/ alsamixer that i listed in the first post

i've also encountered the problem that even if i rmmod all the alsa modules and modify my modules.conf back to being empty, modprobing the oss module emu10k1 (the kernel module for my sound card) doesn't give me sound. i've noticed the alsa modules reload automatically on reboot, as well. another notable happening is that when i opened a shell recently, it gave me a "/dev/dsp: No such device," which i found to be confusing.

btw, is MasterC like MasterD from bionic commando (nintendo), except one letter back? just wild speculation...

thx,
y-p

Wow, sounds like a bad install, just a bad glitch, possibly even a bug. See about going 1 generation back or CVS on the drivers and see if that clears it up. If it does, please, submit a bug report, that always helps for future releases

OT:
I wish, that'd surely be a cooler story than the one I'm about to tell..

I frequented, in the past, several forums that were, for lack of a better term, unruly. In those forums everyone was always talkin trash to each other, and in the 'spirit' of things, someone was named "MasterP" I'm assuming it wasn't MasterP himself, so in a joking fashion, I used the username MasterC, and have used it ever since. My first name is Chad, hence the "C"

Cool

good suggestion. i'll try the CVS and the old versions, and i'll submit the behavior as a bug when (if) it disappears.

i think that it must be a glitch b/c i had the same problem a few days ago, then backed-up and reinstalled everything from scratch. i did a pretty minimal slack install and then immediately installed the alsa sources, only to have stuff as before. the only anomalous thing i can see is that i made a sorta minimal install (no random crap i don't need, like most of KDE, GNOME and some X aps), but i installed all the libraries and sound-related packages.

oh, and just in case it's in short supply

NNN-NAH-NNN-NAH,
y-p

I've been getting the same alsamixer error:

alsamixer: function snd_ctl_open failed for default: No such file or directory

when trying to get my sound working--on an SB live or from the onboard sound. I actually took out my sb live to limit potential problems. I was following ALSA's C-Media CMI8738 instructions when I got to alsamixer and there error above.

Any ideas?

On a side note, I've rebooted since changing my modules.conf to this:

alias eth0 tulip
alias usb-controller usb-uhci
alias usb-controller1 usb-ohci
alias usb-controller2 ehci-hcd
# ALSA portion
alias char-major-116 snd
alias snd-card-0 snd-cmipci
# 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

per the ALSA suggestion, but redhat-config-soundcard still wants to use module 'cmpci'

Thanks for any help,
Max

i've just joined the alsa-users mailing list. i'm gonna try to find a solution in the archives, then if not there, post to the list. if i figure anything out, i'll post back. you guys should join the list.

http://www.alsa-project.org/mailing-lists.php3

gl,
y-p

news flash: i found out how to fix the problem. it's just a matter of linking the sound devices, and this can be done by running the snddevices script in the untarred alsa-driver directory. i know it said you shouldn't have to do it for the newer drivers, but ignore that.

make sure you have the modules correctly inserted first.

now i have alsa sound!

gl,
y-p

W00t!!! Congratulations, and I'm glad it was something as easy as that! I tend to disregard things that say "we have put this in here just in case, but don't use it" I figure it's there, so I use it

Cool

Same thing happens to me, also in Slack. Was following instructions for the ES1938 card. Everything modprobes correctly, but alsamixer yields that snd_ctl_open failed error.

... and that also fixed it.

It was so easy, I want to scream...


I unplugged my USB QuickCam...and viola...sound from my onboard audio--C-Media CM8738. I was searching for help configuring my QuickCam and someone noted that if their's was plugged in on boot, their sound didn't work.

-Max

Thank you very much.

I try :
alsa-driver-0.9.6# ./snddevices
and all is OK....

GGRRRRRRR... i still have the same problems after all.

i've spent an unbelieveble amount of time around this problem and could never find the solution for it. my setup is the same -> Slack 9.1 /w SBLive.

same errors as were described in the first thread (even after running the snddevices script).

the modules are inserted correctly - from what it looks like.

however this is very akward!! Slack doesnt see /dev/dsp or /dev/mixer (/dev/adsp or /dev/amixer) as devices. i had the same problem with Slack 9.0 and never managed to
find a solution for the problem.

here is another one:
If i trace the execution of alsamixer for example, i get:

open("/dev/snd/controlC0", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENODEV (No such device)
open("/dev/aloadC0", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENODEV (No such device)
open("/dev/snd/controlC0", O_RDWR) = -1 ENODEV (No such device)
open("/dev/snd/controlC0", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENODEV (No such device)
open("/dev/aloadC0", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENODEV (No such device)
open("/dev/snd/controlC0", O_RDWR) = -1 ENODEV (No such device)

but i have all of those exactly where alsamixer is looking for them, it just wouldnt treat them as devices.

i dont know what the problem could be here, but if anybody could gimme some direction that would be sUpeR.

thnx for ur time.
-X-

try checking the alsa user mailing list archives or actually subscribing to their mailing list. i guarantee someone will be able to solve your problem there.

if you had the same problems i did in my first thread (from back in the day) and running the snddevices script wasn't enough to fix your problem, perhaps you should make certain you have the drivers for your audio device are loaded. it seems to me that the devices don't exist, so i'm not sure what could be causing it. make certain you check what modules you have inserted w/ "#lsmod" and i'd play with alsamixer a bit also.

gl