Hello, if anyone could help me with this I would appreciate it.

I installed Slackware 9.1 a few weeks ago. I am very happy with the distro thus far but ran into a snag this morning. I ran the following
Swaret --update
Swaret --upgrade -a

The program ran fine and I only had it look in the 9.1 FTP database.
After it finished downloading and installing 18 packages, I rebooted.

I don't remember what packages and don't know where to go look to find out but I know that an ARTS upgrade was one of them.

Anyway, now when I start X I get an error message stating:

Error While initializing the sound driver
Device DEV/DSP cant be opened (no such device)
the sound server will continue using the null output

I also tried gnome and it says that no sound devices exist.

I looked and /dev/dsp points to /dev/dsp0 and both files exist.
They have full permissions as well

I also ran alsaconfig and it probed for cards and found none

Sound has always worked fine until now. It was working right before I upgraded with swaret.

I am lost here. Any help would be much appreciated as I do not want to reload Slackware from scratch for something this goofy.

Thanks
JB

I am assuming all was well until you did the swaret upgrade? If that is wrong let me know.
What output do you see when you type lsmod as root in a console? If that is blank none of your modules are loaded and hence your sound card module is not loaded.

I, too, have an assumption. When you ran 'alsaconfig', you meant to say 'alsaconf' - right? If not, I'd recommend you try alsaconf because I believe THAT program is the official graphical setup program bundled with 9.1

I recommend that you get slapt-get instead because Swaret is out of date and really doesn't work as well as slapt-get. Also, if you can, try getting the alsa packages and the tools, programs, and etc. manually so that you can avoid any conflictions related to system files/dependancies etc.

Get back to us.

alsa was probably upgraded... you will need to do some searches on your video card, to see what steps you should take.

First try running alsaconf, see if it detects a card.. if it does continue on with alsamixer and unmute everything. and see if you can get sound working.

if not...
post the output of lspci, and lsmod. that should give some starter information to point you in the right direction.

Thanks for the quick replies

alsaconf (sorry 'bout the misprint) finds no cards.

lsmod shows:
tulip 41248
ds 6568
yenta_socket 9632
pcmia_core 38112
ide-scsi 8048

lspci shows:

Host Bridge: OPTi INC. 82C701 [FireStar Plus] (rev 32)
ISA Bridge: OPTi INC. 82C701 [FireStar Plus] (rev 31)
CardBus bridge: Texas Instruments PCI1131 (rev01)
VGA compatible controller: Neomagic Corporation NM2160 [MagicGraph128XD]
IDE interface: OPTi Inc. 82C825 [Firebridge 2] (rev 30)
Ethernet controller: Linksys Fast Ethernet 10/100 (rev11)


Anyway, all was well until Swaret upgraded from 9.1 folder (not current)

I also installed Dropline Gnome (in case this has anything to do with it) but it was fine prior to the swaret upgrade.

Thanks again! I appreciate the help

BTW... its an old Compaq Presario 1621 laptop with onboard JBL-PRO sound system.

hmmm.. http://www.alsa-project.org/alsa-doc...or=vendor-Opti

not in the list???

That is and 'old' machine. Here is the only link at linux-laptop.net.

http://www.academ.com/presario1621.html

According to that it is an ESS sound card. Here is a link to ess driver at the alsa project site:

http://www.alsa-project.org/alsa-doc...hnology#matrix

My best guess is to try the ESS 18xx module found here:

http://www.alsa-project.org/alsa-doc...&module=es18xx

According to that link you should be able to run this series of commands and get your card up and running.

modprobe snd-es18xx
modprobe snd-pcm-oss
modprobe snd-mixer-oss
modprobe snd-seq-oss

If they all load correctly you should see them in the output of lsmod.

I had this same problem after running swaret about a month ago. I ran a few searches on google and many people suggested upgrading to kernel 2.4.24 via Swaret. I did that and sound worked again.

you probably want to make sure that soundcore (or snd) loads in that list as well.. I think it will atuomatically load with snd-es18xx though.

Good point. If swaret upgraded alsa then it might have removed the old alsa-driver package, which is the kernel modules, and installed new files. The old ones would have been somewhere down in /lib/modules/2.4.22 and the new ones would be in /lib/modules/2.4.24. On reboot the system would not have been able to modprobe the sound modules from /lib/modules/2.4.22 since they would be gone. An upgrade to kernel 2.4.24 and a reboot would have the modules loading from /lib/modules/2.4.24. Since the sound was working before an upgrade, upgrading the kernel to 2.4.24 would be the first thing to try if it isn't installed. What does the command uname -r show?

sometimes when swaret upgrades a kernel...it fails to install alsa properly the first time

do "swaret --reinstall alsa"

then reboot the kernel...or start your alsa script and see if it works...make sure to run alsamixer first because it will mute everything by default

/me goes OT and gets chills running down his spine due to the lack of netfilter modules

"swaret --reinstall alsa"

I tried doing that earlier when I updated to Slackware-current (kernel 2.4.25) but Swaret wouldn't install the packages at all...

So I did this:

cd /var/swaret

installpkg (all alsa packages)

Reboot

Run alsamixer as a normal user.

su

alsactl store

Reboot

Fixed

Note: If you cannot get sound in flash working, as root, use chmod a+rw /dev/dsp then run alsamixer and alsactl store again. Reboot.

I tried everything above, and my sound still wouldn't work after I ran swaret. So I ran 'swaret --remove alsaX' (replace x with the name of the alsa package), then from the command promt I mounted slackware disk 1, and typed 'cd /mnt/cdrom/slackware/ap',
and ran './install-packages', and selected all alsa packages. Then I did the same for '/mnt/cdrom/slackware/l'. Then I ran 'alsaconf', 'alsamixer', and 'alsactl store', and I had sound back.
Noah

Nice job, Noah. I am sure this will help others. =D

I tried the same thing when upgrading to current, though. Didn't fly.