No sound in Slackware 10: Where is rcalsasound?
 

Hi,

first of all: Don't throw tomatoes on me for asking yet another sound question... ;-)

I just finished installing Slackware 10 from CD 1 and 2 burned from the bit torrent ISO images. Now I have no sound.

alsaconf detects my soundcard quite correctly, and enables the right module in /etc/modules.conf. But it then wants to run rcalsasound start, which fails, as there simply is no rcalsasound on Slackware, as far as I can see.

I don't know much about sound, but I suppose the Slackware replacement for this is /etc/rc.d/rc.alsa, right? So I typed /etc/rc.d/rc.alsa start --- with no noticeble effect, at all.

Yes, I checked the volume settings with aumix, and they are fine now. But no sound.

BTW, this is independent of the kernel version. I first tried it with the default 2.4.26 kernel. As it didn't work on that, I then upgraded to 2.6.7 following precisely the instructions accompanying the packages in /testing (ie creating initrd and so on). I installed the binary, instead of compiling the kernel myself.. I grabbed all the ALSA stuff from there, too, and installed it using installpkg. System is up and running now, it's fast and good-looking, I'll yet have to see how well I can get my peripheraly working with it (printer, scanner and so on). But: No sound.

Thanks for any help or idea what I could check for.

gargamel

Instead of using aumix, try alsamixer -- rcalsasound isn't included, you're right. But it wasn't included in 9.1 or 9.0 either ;)

Depending on your chipset, you may need to adjust volumes for more than simply master volume and PCM1 and 2. Scroll to the right, and you may see some more chipset specific mixer settings.

If you do a lsmod and see all the alsa modules (prefixed with snd-*) it means that you should be good to go, save some mixer settings.

Good luck ;)
--Shade

Thanks for this *quick* (!) reply!
I bumped up the volumes for all channels possible using amixer, as you suggested. Although lsmod sees all the modules (as far as I can tell, none is missing, but I may be wrong), I still have no sound...

lsmod output (soundcard is Terratec 128 PCi with ESS-Solo-1 chipset; driver is es1938, which appears to be there):

snd_pcm_oss 49704 0
snd_mixer_oss 17408 1 snd_pcm_oss
snd_es1938 20392 1
snd_opl3_lib 9216 1 snd_es1938
snd_hwdep 8196 1 snd_opl3_lib
snd_via82xx 25636 0
snd_ac97_codec 64644 1 snd_via82xx
snd_pcm 80904 3 snd_pcm_oss,snd_es1938,snd_via82xx
snd_timer 21764 2 snd_opl3_lib,snd_pcm
snd_page_alloc 10888 2 snd_via82xx,snd_pcm
gameport 3712 2 snd_es1938,snd_via82xx
snd_mpu401_uart 6912 2 snd_es1938,snd_via82xx
snd_rawmidi 21028 1 snd_mpu401_uart
snd_seq_device 7304 2 snd_opl3_lib,snd_rawmidi
snd 48484 14 snd_pcm_oss,snd_mixer_oss,snd_es1938,snd_opl3_lib,snd_hwdep,snd_via82xx,snd_ac97_codec,snd_pcm,snd_t imer,snd_mpu401_uart,snd_rawmidi,snd_seq_device
soundcore 6752 1 snd

Thanks!

gargamel

i got my sound to work, but it's really fuzzy for some reason.

i just have a cheap soudblaster 16 PCI.

do i need to update alsa or something?

Soooound! 8-)))

Yes, it works now with kernel 2.6.7 from /testing (everything pre-compiled). But I don't know, why... I haven't changed a thing since my last posting, just two reboots (first SuSE, because I find a clue why sound is good there, then Slackware again) --- and now it just works. Pffff...).

Could it be that there are some scripts running right after installation in the background, that have to finish first, before one can expect everything working? That would possibly explain it... And it would mean, that one just has to wait a certain amount of time after a fresh install, and everything becomes fine... ;-)
Does anyone know?

Thanks
gargamel

and now it's gone, again --- no sound...

Kernel 2.6 problem?

gargamel

it seems like 10 is kind of buggy...

Is that your own observation or a conclusion from what you read on this forum?

gargamel

my own observation.

i mean, i'm no experct, not by far. but i'm having a lot more problems than i did with 9.1.

Ok, I think I'm making progress.

There appear to be two problems.
(1) The sound daemon dies occasionally. Easy to fix: /etc/rc.d/rc.alsa restart. But it's a bit annoying having it to do so often...
(2) Sound is routed randomly to any of the sound cards in a system. Eg, my system has AC97 onboard sound, which I normally don't use, and a Terratec PCi 128 soundcard, which I prefer because of its superior sound quality. Slackware now apparently sometimes sends sound to one sound chip, and then to the other. There are only speakers connected to one of them, so when the other soundchip is used, it is as if there's no sound, at all. But it's there and works fine, which explains that there are no error messages.

In SuSE one can use YaST in order to determine a default sound card, which is then used as long as you don't explicitly specify something else. How can I achieve the same in Slackware?


Other than that, my first impression of Slackware 10 is quite good. Ironically, it is the first distribution ever since SuSE 6.2 (that's been a long time ago) to give me sound on my old P120 laptop. Slackware 9.1 and SuSE 7.x and 8.x didn't.

So my summary is twofold. Slackware 10 is excellent on at least one of my systems, but it has a few minor sound problems on another one. I haven't seen any other problems, so far, but let's wait and see... ;-)

gargamel

surely in ur bios u can disable the onbaord card?

Compile your kernel and these odd sound problems won't appear no more, just know your hardware to proprely do kernel config.

Thanks for the hints
- muting AC97 in BIOS
- compiling kernel.

I'll try the first, but hesitate to do the second as I don't like to have to re-compile my kernel every time a security or bug fix patch is released for Slackware. I'll check it out, anyway, but would prefer it not be necessary.

CORRECTION: Slackware doesn't route sound *randomly* to PCI soundcard and onboard sound. Instead, right after configuring it the PCI card is used. When there's isn't any sound for a few minutes or so, it quietly switches to onboard sound. From that moment on, only onboard sound works.
To switch back to PCI soundcard, I re-configure it. Again it works, as long as I keep it busy, but is being dropped by the system, when it is idle for a while. Weird! (But reproducable).

Thanks again for your hints and tips!

gargamel

I am having some sound problems with Slackware 10 and my Inspiron 5100. It uses the alsa sound drivers, but onlt the sound on XMMS goes through. System sounds and programs like gaim and mplayer do not have any sound.

I have same problem too
 

I have install slack 9.1 to my labtop (Datron Aero) and yesterday ı uninstaled 9.1 and instaled 10.0. But ı cant hear any sound. When ı run alsaconf ı see that alsa can configure my soundcard (Ali M5455) and no error message displayed when ı run the xmms or other. ı run the lsmod and it's look like

Module Size Used by Not tainted
snd-pcm-oss 37736 0 (unused)
snd-mixer-oss 12504 0 [snd-pcm-oss]
snd-intel8x0 18924 1
snd-ac97-codec 49500 0 [snd-intel8x0]
gameport 1420 0 [snd-intel8x0]
snd-pcm 56072 1 [snd-pcm-oss snd-intel8x0]
snd-timer 13604 0 [snd-pcm]
snd-page-alloc 6328 0 [snd-intel8x0 snd-pcm]
snd-mpu401-uart 3200 0 [snd-intel8x0]
snd-rawmidi 12740 0 [snd-mpu401-uart]
snd-seq-device 3888 0 [snd-rawmidi]
snd 30852 0 [snd-pcm-oss snd-mixer-oss snd-intel8x0 snd-ac97-codec snd-pcm snd-timer snd-mpu401-uart snd-rawmidi snd-seq-device]
soundcore 3396 4 [snd]
ohci1394 24112 0 (unused)
ieee1394 42276 0 [ohci1394]
8139too 14376 1
mii 2272 0 [8139too]
crc32 2880 0 [8139too]
usb-ohci 19240 0 (unused)
ehci-hcd 17580 0 (unused)
usbcore 59308 1 [usb-ohci ehci-hcd]
ds 6548 2
yenta_socket 10336 2
pcmcia_core 39972 0 [ds yenta_socket]
ide-scsi 9328 0

please help me...