[SOLVED] My slackware 14.1 sound suddenly doesn't work

hottdogg · 04-23-2015, 08:14 PM

Hi,
Few days ago, my slackware 14.1 suddenly doesn't have sound, Everytime I login to KDE,there was KDE dialog
complaining about audio driver not used anymore.
Now,after I tinkering with KDE audio setting, I got this notification in applet everytime I login:

Code:

The audio playback device HDA Intel PCH (ALC269VC Analog) does not work.
Falling back to .

But strange thing is aplay can produce sound.

$lsmod

Code:

Module                  Size  Used by
rfcomm                 32551  12 
bnep                   10631  2 
ipv6                  292446  26 
cpufreq_ondemand        8799  0 
lp                      9851  0 
ppdev                   5862  0 
parport_pc             19332  0 
parport                30389  3 lp,ppdev,parport_pc
option                 26200  1 
usb_wwan                5846  1 option
usbserial              25021  4 option,usb_wwan
cdc_ncm                10593  0 
usbnet                 19461  1 cdc_ncm
fuse                   73848  5 
btusb                  16152  0 
bluetooth             220548  24 bnep,btusb,rfcomm
keucr                  58218  0 
uvcvideo               71742  0 
videobuf2_vmalloc       2912  1 uvcvideo
videobuf2_memops        1879  1 videobuf2_vmalloc
videobuf2_core         27437  1 uvcvideo
usb_storage            46020  0 
videodev              102061  2 uvcvideo,videobuf2_core
i2c_dev                 5843  0 
intel_powerclamp        8391  0 
coretemp                5870  0 
nouveau               951981  1 
i915                  567446  2 
mxm_wmi                 1427  1 nouveau
intel_agp              10864  1 i915
ttm                    63381  1 nouveau
intel_gtt              12600  2 i915,intel_agp
drm_kms_helper         35118  2 i915,nouveau
drm                   229054  6 ttm,i915,drm_kms_helper,nouveau
mperf                   1163  0 
snd_hda_codec_hdmi     29622  1 
acer_wmi               23686  0 
sparse_keymap           3074  1 acer_wmi
agpgart                27267  4 drm,ttm,intel_agp,intel_gtt
thermal                 8644  0 
snd_hda_codec_realtek    34792  1 
processor              27543  0 
video                  11451  3 i915,acer_wmi,nouveau
joydev                  9751  0 
snd_hda_intel          34861  0 
thermal_sys            22993  4 video,intel_powerclamp,thermal,processor
snd_hda_codec         143196  3 snd_hda_codec_realtek,snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hda_intel
snd_hwdep               6388  1 snd_hda_codec
snd_pcm                76009  3 snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hda_codec,snd_hda_intel
snd_page_alloc          7098  2 snd_pcm,snd_hda_intel
snd_timer              18614  1 snd_pcm
brcmsmac              531356  0 
cordic                  1072  1 brcmsmac
brcmutil                4437  1 brcmsmac
mac80211              429423  1 brcmsmac
wl                   4137474  0 
thinkpad_acpi          61881  0 
freq_table              2628  2 cpufreq_ondemand,thermal_sys
nvram                   5780  1 thinkpad_acpi
i2c_i801               13860  0 
hwmon                   1337  4 coretemp,thinkpad_acpi,nouveau,thermal_sys
mei_me                  7728  0 
mei                    42963  1 mei_me
kvm_intel             126236  0 
kvm                   363491  1 kvm_intel
crc32_pclmul            2883  0 
crc32c_intel           14113  0 
r8169                  57775  0 
i2c_algo_bit            5351  2 i915,nouveau
snd                    58630  8 snd_hda_codec_realtek,snd_hwdep,snd_timer,snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_pcm,snd_hda_codec,snd_hda_intel,thinkpad_acpi
i2c_core               20936  8 drm,i915,i2c_i801,i2c_dev,drm_kms_helper,i2c_algo_bit,nouveau,videodev
lib80211                3781  1 wl
cfg80211              380228  3 wl,brcmsmac,mac80211
rfkill                 15522  6 cfg80211,acer_wmi,thinkpad_acpi,bluetooth
lpc_ich                12841  0 
psmouse                81058  0 
bcma                   30033  1 brcmsmac
xhci_hcd               88528  0 
ehci_pci                3688  0 
ehci_hcd               39275  1 ehci_pci
mii                     3955  2 r8169,usbnet
soundcore               5354  1 snd
evdev                   9648  10 
serio_raw               4585  0 
ghash_clmulni_intel     4333  0 
microcode              13140  0 
wmi                     8243  3 acer_wmi,mxm_wmi,nouveau
battery                11579  0 
ac                      4311  0 
button                  4696  2 i915,nouveau
loop                   18479  0

#aplay -l

Code:

**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 0: ALC269VC Analog [ALC269VC Analog]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 3: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

#aplay -D plughw:0,0 STE-001.wav

Code:

Playing WAVE 'STE-001.wav' : Signed 24 bit Little Endian in 3bytes, Rate 48000 Hz, Stereo

Also, In KDE System settings > Multimedia > phonon settings
clicking test for any 'enabled' card I got error: Failed to set the selected device

frankbell · 04-23-2015, 08:46 PM

I would suggest booting to a Live CD of something (Mint would be a good choice) and testing the audio. If it works under the Live CD, then the issue is certainly a
Slackware issue; if it doesn't work under the Live CD, it may well be a hardware issue.

If it is a hardware issue, no amount of mucking about with software will fix it.

Drakeo · 04-24-2015, 06:51 AM

go into settings and set your defaults playback apply to device list. do that for all three categories. then reboot. when kde asks you what to do with the devices etc etc. just remove them. what happened it has happen to me before for some reason when kde read alsa it reconfigured. and now you have duplicate copies.
you will find this often when you have installed pulse audio. Another thing I have alsa /etc/modeprobe.d sound.conf

Code:

alias snd-card-0 snd-hda-intel
alias sound-slot-0 snd-hda-intel
options snd slots=snd-hda-intel,snd-usb-audio,

hottdogg · 05-05-2015, 10:49 PM

@frankbell
This is not hardware issue,
as you can see in my first post, running aplay as root does produce sound and my laptop is dual boot with windows. Windows can play sound normally.

@Drakeo
Tried your answer, put some config in sound.conf inside /etc/modprobe.d/ still doesn't work.

STDOUBT · 05-05-2015, 11:12 PM

hottdogg,
If you have XFCE installed, does sound work there?
Also, you do have 2 audio devices. It's a configuration error of some kind, and KDE (at least) can't decide which to use.
Did you install pulse-audio?
Is the "HDA Intel" indeed selected in phonon?

Quote:

my slackware 14.1 suddenly doesn't have sound

Certainly something changed software-wise. Chances are pretty high that you made that change.

aikempshall · 05-06-2015, 01:33 AM

You may need to change the order of the devices as recognized by kde.

Go to

System Settings -> Multimedia -> Phonon

Test each card and move those that do play sound to the top using the "Prefer" button. I've had this a few times in KDE under 14.1. In fact there's a few things in KDE that seem to be losing their original settings. Maybe it's an age thing

Hopefully KDE in the next Slackware release will remember things a bit better.

Alex

dugan · 05-06-2015, 02:08 PM

Check if your user account is a member of the audio group.

enorbet · 05-08-2015, 03:10 AM

Hello
Maybe I am barking up the wrong tree but even if you don't really have 2 sound chips (eg: onboard or standup card plus HDMI on a video card) the system is seeing a very odd contradiction here. This (below quoted from your 1st post) troubles me -

#aplay -l
Code:

**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 0: ALC269VC Analog [ALC269VC Analog]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 3: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

Notice both devices are listed as Card 0, but one is "device 0" and the other "device 3". This may possibly be somewhat explained byt the subdevices lines but even those seem contradictory. Whether these 2 are physically different or not seems to me to be a non-issue since the system sees them at least somewhat separate, requiring a choice. This may even be as simple as the system sub-listing alternate outputs and probably is due to a buffer chip.

The easy solution, if not final at least a very important step, is to blacklist one and prefer the other. If you need both outputs for switching purposes then you will need a considerably complex config such as commonly found in asoundrc to assign each to specific apps or tasks/roles. It would help a lot if we knew more about nature, brand/model of this system or at least the souncard(s).

Still the first step is to pare down, blacklist one eliminating that variable and see what works. Then report back and we can take step 2.

hottdogg · 05-17-2015, 12:05 AM

Hello again,
Apparently when I logged in as root ( I rarely login as root,usually just su),sound works. Sooo...
I tried dugan's solution.

Code:

#usermod -a -G audio hottdogg

And the sound is working again!
But this is strange, in Slackware I never had to explicitly assign audio group to user to make sound works until now.
Is this a hacky solution?
anyway, I'll mark this as solved. Thanks Dugan.

@enorbet
I thing device 3 is for HDMI output(my laptop has hdmi port), I don't want to complicate thing configuring for hdmi output. So won't go further with that.
Btw, this my sound card

Code:

# lspci -v | grep -i audio
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 7 Series/C210 Series Chipset Family High Definition Audio Controller (rev 04)

bassmadrigal · 05-18-2015, 07:36 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by hottdogg

And the sound is working again!
But this is strange, in Slackware I never had to explicitly assign audio group to user to make sound works until now.
Is this a hacky solution?

If you create a user using the adduser script, it will prompt you to press the UP button to assign a user to common groups. If you don't do this, or create a user using the useradd command, you won't get assigned to these groups. You're likely not assigned to several other important groups like plugdev, printer, power, netdev, etc.

If you used to start the computer in runlevel 3 (ie, you had to run startx to start the WM/DE), then those groups are assigned automatically for that session. Once you switch the boot process to runlevel 4 (so it boots right to KDM), none of those groups are assigned and it relies on what groups you are a part of.

It would probably be a good idea to add yourself to the other important groups, so you have the access you should.

Code:

usermod -a -G wheel,floppy,video,cdrom,plugdev,power,netdev,lp,scanner hottdogg