ALSA on Sarge - "No such device" problem
 

However Xine and Audacity can play sound on my Sarge PC, I can not set the Sound System in the Control Center of KDE to ALSA.

In the Sound System I tried at "Override device location" different settings:
/dev/dsp
/dev/dsp1 to 3
without success.

Also Alsamixer gives an error:

localhost:/root# alsamixer
alsamixer: function snd_ctl_open failed for default: No such device


I have searched on LQ and with google and found a lot of people having the same problem, but no solutions were given.

I need ALSA to get working because I want to have sound in GnomeMeeting

I would say there's either not enough modules loaded or incorrect ones loaded so the sound daemon won't start..
In your KDE preferences, are you using the artsd daemon?
what sound service is starting in /etc/rc2.d ?

The sound card obviously works.. but to help with any difficult probs.. like alsamixer not starting..
What sound card do you have?
what does lspci show?
what does dmesg show?
what does lsmod show?
what is in /etc/modutils/aliases file for sound services?

In /etc/rc2.d I found:
S20alsa

When I do:
root@san-pedro-z:/# /etc/init.d/alsa restart
The result is:
Storing ALSA mixer settings...failed.
Starting ALSA.../etc/init.d/alsa: Error: alsactl restore failed with message 'alsactl: load_state:1134: No soundcards found...'.
done.

lspci gives:
0000:02:0e.0 Multimedia audio controller: Ensoniq 5880 AudioPCI (rev 02)

*By the way, the PC of my wife with the same installation (also a HD install with Knoppix 3.6 and after that upgrade & dist-upgrade) and the same problem has a different sound cart:
0000:00:06.0 Multimedia audio controller: Cirrus Logic CS 4614/22/24 [CrystalClear SoundFusion Audio Accelerator] (rev 01)

dmesg shows a lot (>70) of lines with:
Ensoniq AudioPCI soundcard not found or device busy
(I did dmesg after the alsa restart, btw)

And on my wifes PC:
PCI: Found IRQ 10 for device 00:06.0
Crystal 4280/46xx + AC97 Audio, version 1.28.32, 00:49:37 Aug 9 2004
cs46xx: Card found at 0xf4100000 and 0xf4000000, IRQ 10
cs46xx: Unknown card (1013:4280) at 0xf4100000/0xf4000000, IRQ 10
ac97_codec: AC97 Audio codec, id: CRY3 (Cirrus Logic CS4297)

lsmod gives:
snd 29988 0 (autoclean)
rfcomm 30848 0 (autoclean)
l2cap 17516 2 (autoclean) [rfcomm]
bluez 31076 1 (autoclean) [rfcomm l2cap]
ipx 19524 1 (autoclean)
capi 19168 0
capifs 3500 1 [capi]
kernelcapi 30692 1 [capi]
capiutil 22176 0 [kernelcapi]
parport_pc 25128 1 (autoclean)
lp 7460 0
parport 22496 1 [parport_pc lp]
autofs4 8756 0 (unused)
af_packet 13544 1
nls_iso8859-1 2844 0 (unused)
nls_cp437 4348 0 (unused)
agpgart 42724 0 (unused)
es1371 30120 0
gameport 1388 0 [es1371]
ac97_codec 11884 0 [es1371]
soundcore 3428 4 [snd es1371]
de4x5 39488 1
crc32 2816 0 [de4x5]
jedec_probe 9056 0
chipreg 860 0 [jedec_probe]
gen_probe 1776 0 [jedec_probe]
hw_random 2700 0 (unused)
serial 52068 1
usb-storage 62016 0 (unused)
ataraid 6404 0 (unused)
ieee1394 183300 0
usb-uhci 21836 0 (unused)
usbcore 57824 1 [usb-storage usb-uhci]
pcmcia_core 39840 0
thermal 6692 0
processor 9008 0 [thermal]
fan 1600 0
button 2700 0
battery 5952 0
asus_acpi 9612 0
ac 1792 0
ide-scsi 9040 0
rtc 7004 0 (autoclean)
ext3 64388 2 (autoclean)
jbd 46804 2 (autoclean) [ext3]

In /etc/modutils/aliases I found:
alias via82cxxx via82cxxx_audio
(The same as I found in my wifes PC)

Tnx in advance for your help!

PS. When I find a solution I will post it on all the other forum posts that I have bookmarked on my search for a solution.

By the way:
soundcardconfig (or sndconfig) finds:

5880 AudioPCI

but says:

ERROR:
There are already sound config options in /etc/modules.conf.
This could give unexpected results.
Please remove the appropriate entries from /etc/modutils/*

Some days ago (before apt-get upgrade & dist-upgrade!) I did not get this message and could hear the "test" sound.

I also do not know what entries to to remove

alsaconf says:
No supported PnP or PCI card found

Re: ALSA on Sarge - "No such device" problem
 

This probably means that the OSS modules for your sound card are loaded. I don't know about
xine but I think it is using OSS as an output plugin and that explains why it works (OSS modules loaded).
However when you try adjusting the sound system from the KDE control center to ALSA it doesn't work because the OSS modules are loaded and prevents ALSA from running.
My advice would be to install ALSA modules and remove the OSS ones. Usually there are sound drivers provided by OSS and others provided by ALSA. You can install and remove modules (drivers) using "modconf". if you don't have it then "apt-get install modconf".
In the modconf you will find some drivers under OSS and others under something like /kernel/sound/pci or something like that.
You can as well check your /etc/modules file and see if the name of the OSS driver for your card is there, if it is then just comment it.

Hope this helps.

default Debian Gnu/Linux kernel doesn't support alsa,I mean it is not enabled in sound section so there is no use even if you install alsa oss,alsa utils,alsa headers,alsa sources.you have to recompile your kernel and enable it in alsa support section and untick oss there.

debian does not support alsa?
 

I've been having similar problems with sound, in that it works with the CD, and the net, and some applications, but not with others. If alsa is not configured to work with the the Debian kernel, why are there alsa packages? And what do I use instead of alsa?

A working Debian (Knoppix) alsa install..

from /etc/modutils/aliases..
alias via82cxxx via82cxxx_audio
alias char-major-116 snd
alias snd-card-0 via82cxxx_audio
alias char-major-14 soundcore
alias sound-slot-0 snd-card-0
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

from lsmod..
snd-mixer-oss 11256 0 (autoclean) [snd-pcm-oss]
snd-via82xx 10540 0 (autoclean)
snd-pcm 56576 0 (autoclean) [snd-pcm-oss snd-via82xx]
snd-timer 14824 0 (autoclean) [snd-pcm]
snd-ac97-codec 30784 0 (autoclean) [snd-via82xx]
snd-page-alloc 4016 0 (autoclean) [snd-via82xx snd-pcm]
snd-mpu401-uart 3056 0 (autoclean) [snd-via82xx]
snd-rawmidi 12288 0 (autoclean) [snd-mpu401-uart]
snd-seq-device 3780 0 (autoclean) [snd-rawmidi]
snd 27556 0 (autoclean) [snd-pcm-oss snd-mixer-oss snd-via82xx snd-pcm snd-timer snd-ac97-codec snd-mpu401-uart snd-rawmidi snd-seq-device]
soundcore 3428 5 (autoclean) [snd]

So I gather you would need to specify..
alias es1371 snd-ens1371
alias snd-card-0 snd-ens1371

unless you grab the alsa sources and compile the appropriate/closest module to the 5880..

I am interested if this helps you, let us know:

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...hreadid=240744

I had the exact same problem, and, as OneManArmy said, it was because of OSS modules (OSS is incompatible with ALSA, that is why ALSA provides an OSS interface, so OSS programs still work under ALSA). What I did was this: unload oss modules, go to /lib/modules/<kernel-name>/kernel and move the folder OSS somewhere (perhaps your home dir). Run alsaconf, and then you should have it working (perhaps you will need to reboot, I did this a while ago so I don't remember that well).

NOTE 1: I have never had a 2.4 kernel in Debian so I don't know if ALSA comes preinstalled, but on 2.6 kernels it does.
NOTE 2: To delete the oss dir you may need to go into maintainer mode so that the modules aren't loaded (for example kde uses sound through arts). To do that you can reboot and use the recovery mode of the kernel installed, that should boot into maintainer mode.

alsa modules can't read the System-map
 

The problem is the alsa-modules cannot read the System-map, because the System-map is named after the default "speakup" kernel, whereas the modules are looking for a system-map with a different name (ie, 386). Creating a link to the system-map will solve this.
I describe this in a bit more detail at this post here.

I write this for those using a 2.4.27-speakup kernel, which is the default for Debian Sarge.