How to make sound work?
 

Hi

I have just installed Arch but even having alsa I can't listen MP3 or any other Sound :(
I have almost plain system with KDE ALSA 2.6.9 kernel. Could any one give me some link or hint ?

Thx a lot

off to a good start
 

Welcome to LQ!

I'd really like to help you get off to a good start. Please read
the LQ Rules that you agreed to again. We are not supposed to
do your homework. If you search the forums, you'll probably
find this answered many times already.

Read How To Ask Questions The Smart Way so you can learn
to post a question to a forum or mailing list. This post is not
meant to discourage or be critical of you. If you'll take the
suggestion, and read that article, you will get much better
help from your posts, and you'll learn Linux a lot quicker.

That kind rebuke having been stated...

To find out your sound chipset, issue as root "lspci"
To find if the proper modules are loaded issue "lsmod"
What are you using to try and listen to mp3s?
What desktop environment / window manager are you using?
Have you checked your volume with alsamixer? If not, issue
"alsamixer" as a normal user and unmute channels with the m
key and turn up your volume with the up arrow key. Then ESC
to exit, then issue as root "alsactl store" to save your settings.

There are questions and suggestions that you should have
done before you posted. There are complete instructions for
using ALSA at http://www.alsa-project.org

Okey I appologize I wont do that again .

I searched other posts but there was no result with enough similarity to my problem :(

Here I gives some more details:

I have AC'97 compatible soundcard (integrated with mainborad)
I have installed ALSA, ALSA-libs ... (actually everything with ALSA in name :) )
When I tried to run MP3 under tty i recived msg: No default libao driver available. (program "mpg321")
And Using xmms under X resulted in popup : check that You have Your soundcard configured properly or if another program is not using it or if there is a proper plugin selected.
I didn't check alsa-mixer I think it is not connected to my problem... (Have I change volume if it is not starting playing at all. )

What about my lsmod result I belive those are conected with sound:
-soundcore
-ac97-driver
-snd

Please give me some instructions what to do or where to search.
Thx a lot.

Post the output of "lspci" run as root. We need the actual soundchip.
When you enter it, so that it's formatted and easy to read, use the
Code button in the Post Reply window. So here's what you'll do.
Open a terminal, or a shell, login as root, and issue "lspci" and then
copy it by highlighting it with your left mouse button. Then you can
paste it into the Code box.

When someone asks for the output, just post the whole thing cause
there may be something else we would see that could help you.

Please post the manufacturer and model of your motherboard.

What desktop environment / window manager are you using?
Examples are Fluxbox, Xfce, KDE, Gnome...

How did you install ALSA?
Which specific files (filenames)?
From where did you get them?

Here is what lspci returned:

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corp. 82845 845 (Brookdale) Chipset Host Bridge (rev 11)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corp. 82845 845 (Brookdale) Chipset AGP Bridge (rev 11)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corp. 82801BAM/CAM PCI Bridge (rev 42)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corp. 82801CAM ISA Bridge (LPC) (rev 02)
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corp. 82801CAM IDE U100 (rev 02)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corp. 82801CA/CAM SMBus (rev 02)
00:1f.5 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corp. 82801CA/CAM AC'97 Audio (rev 02)
00:1f.6 Modem: Intel Corp. 82801CA/CAM AC'97 Modem (rev 02)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Radeon R250 Lf [Radeon Mobility 9000] (rev 01)
02:04.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Texas Instruments TSB43AB21 IEEE-1394a-2000 Controller (PHY/Link)
02:06.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8139/8139C/8139C+ (rev 10)
02:07.0 CardBus bridge: ENE Technology Inc CB1410 Cardbus Controller
02:0a.0 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. USB (rev 50)
02:0a.1 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. USB (rev 50)
02:0a.2 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. USB 2.0 (rev 51)



Well it is laptop CALIFORNIA ACCESS CA 9001 I know that its parts are from other vendor but I can not check who produced Main Board
It is polish notebook vendor so I do not think it may help in any way.... Their site have a logo "Designed For M$ Win... " and they are had not supported me in any way ever. But used gentoo and there was no problem with sound. I just installe ALSA* .

I use KDE and Fluxbox. (I use X rather rare)

I installs all by typing: pacman -S pkgname (As it is now Arch Linux)
I belive it used default mirror. I didn't touched anything:
ftp://ftp.archlinux.org/release/os/i686
ftp://ftp.archlinux.de/pub/archlinux/release/os/i686
ftp://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/dist...elease/os/i686
http://archlinux.antesis.org/release/os/i686

Here are ALSA pkgs which I have installed:
alsa-driver 1.0.7-1
alsa-lib 1.0.7-1
alsa-oss 1.0.7-1
alsa-utils 1.0.7-1

http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Alsa%20setup is a good start. another thing you can do , is search the Arch Linux's forum

also you can try to see what modules you can use for your sound card.

good luck & post back if you have problems

I posted to you while working on a Windoze box and it totally
hung - told me I had removed the hard drive, so I lost the post.
However, you're in good hands with an Arch Linux user. The
module for your soundchip is intel8x0, and the ALSA page for
it is here but I see from looking at the Arch forum that it does
things quite unique to Arch, so follow those instructions.

Follow TheShemeta's advice, and post back when you get stuck
again. You will have to load modules, and that ALSA instruction
page tells you which ones you need in the modprobe instruction.

Off Topic
 

Hey Chinaman,

you were the one trying to help me with ACPI in the Neotebook forum. i figured out, that for some HP laptops, ACPI is broken, so there is a patch. i recompiled my kernel & now everything is working fine. just wanted to say THANKS for trying to help.

take care, Shemeta

Hi okey that works

the info for intel8x0 drv was crucial. After that i found in /lib/modules/.../sound/snd-intel8x0.ko

and loaded it then alsamixer :) after all alsactl store and music plays !


Thx a lot guys.

I just installed Fedora Core 2 on a PC with a Creative Soundblaster 16 Plug and Play soundcard. FD2 does not see the card - I used Hardware Browser and saw no sound-related stuff. I previously had Mandrake on this box and simply installed ALSA, then ran sndconfig and got it working. The problem is I don't know how to install ALSA here. Here is output from comand line:
[root@localhost jay]# /sbin/lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: ALi Corporation M1541 (rev 04)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: ALi Corporation M1541 PCI to AGP Controller (rev 04)
00:07.0 ISA bridge: ALi Corporation M1533 PCI to ISA Bridge [Aladdin IV] (rev c3)
00:0f.0 IDE interface: ALi Corporation M5229 IDE (rev c1)
00:12.0 Ethernet controller: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] 79c970 [PCnet32 LANCE] (rev 16)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 86C326 5598/6326 (rev c3)
####
I have install CDs.

@ lele

glad you made it working. one more happy Arch user.

@ Whatshisface

since you know your sound card brand, you can check out www.alsa-project.org & see what module to use with your sound card. if it's not built inthe kernel, you need to load it at start up. but i am not familiar with FC 2.

if this is your sound card, read it careful & see if it will help you further http://www.alsa-project.org/alsa-doc...16&module=sb16

good luck