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How I resolved an my ALSA sound issue - Fedora Core 5
Greetings all
This is going to be as breif as I can make it and I hope that it helps you if you too are having issues with your sound card(s) in Fedora Core 5 (FC5). Brief History: I decided to make the switch to FC5 after trying to compile a kernel in Mandriva failed miserably several times. So, out came my trusty FC5 install DVD and FC5 was installed within a matter of just over 1 hour. downloaded and installed the latest kernel (2.6.17.13) and performed a full yum update. This only took about 10-12 hours to do tops (I dont know the exact time, I did it overnight while I was asleep) After rebooting to my new, fully updated kernel i realised that I had some issues with my soundcard. It was being detected, that was fine, but no matter how far I turned the volume up (external amp, or alsamixer) it would not budge, and play ANY sound at all. not even the test sounds would play. Bummer, especially when during the install i made sure that the required packages were installed - and tested these. (FYI my card is a Creative Labs SB Audigy LS. Module id: snd-ca0106) After much searching, I found that I would have to update my alsa drivers and so forth. Hmmmm, okay, so long as it did not involve me having to reconfigure my kernel, lets go gang-busting! I googled and googled. I even searched these trusty forums, but alas, none of what I found was right. UNTIL!!!!! I found this page. http://www.alsa-project.org/alsa-doc...dule=hda-intel Thats right! Direct from the horses mouth! YOU RIPPER! Okay, it wasnt perfect. Namely for the fact that it was referring to the Intel ICH southbridge HD-audio and modem soundcard, and I had a sound blaster, but the guide to get me through was fine, and it sorted my issue out just fine. *You may need to have your kernel sources ready!!* First off, you will need three packages:
Firstly, download and extract these tarballs in a directory somewhere in your tree /home/<user>/alsa is a good place to start! First off, install and make the driver. remember, you may need to specify where your kernel sources are! Secondly, install the alsa lib package, and then the alsa utils package. Please bear in mind that you may have to also specify in your execution of these where your kernel sources are! once you have done that, add your modules to your kernel, reboot, and whadddya know! SOUND! I hope that this info provides of some use to you - if you are having troubles, that is. Please excuse my typing/spelling. I am not the best touch typist, but I am getting there! |
a reply to remove from zero posts
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I too had an Alsa issue with FC5. My microphone input on a SB Live 5.1 would not work no matter what. I could hear myself talking when microphone was in capture mode, but could never record or use TeamSpeak. (no sound at all from mic into those apps) I now wish I had tried a solution similar to yours, but instead after much searching and trying many suggestions, I installed the oss package from 4front technologies. (free use for non commercial purposes) Sound system is a bit sluggish now, but the microphone works perfectly. There is a forum over at their site and the dev does answer questions to try to help if you are having trouble with an install. There are several drawbacks to this package though. You must be root to enable the sound server. (no a problem if you remember to do so before logging into X or put the command i the init file.) The second drawback is there is a high probability that some apps will not work correctly with this sound system. (so far all my stuff works... TeamSpeak, Mplayer, Audacity, XMMS)
Thanks for posting your fix, I hope to try it on a future install or when I decide I don't care if I mess up my current one. hehe Kid |
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What's the parameter for telling the configure script where your kernel source is? I think this may be what's causing mine to fall over during make. Mup. |
This is kind of a "bump". I'm really interested in this because i'm getting no sound from my ICH6 chipset. On this comp its FC5. I had sound trouble on a diff. comp, but I switched to Ubuntu and its working now. And Im a very, very big linux noob- so all that stuff you said above- I'd appreciate it in laymans terms. :)
Thanks |
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Basically, I'm was trying to fix ALSA (the Advanced Linux Sound Architecture) which I managed to break while trying to upgrade it after erroneously suspecting it to be the reason that my external microphone wasn't working. A lot of Linux software is available as source code, which is usually architecture independant (runs on i386, i486, PPC - like Mac iBook etc) and has to be compiled on your machine before you can run it. The first part of the process is configuring the 'make' script, which is like a long config file that tells the 'make' process which compilers you have on your system, which libraries and so on. You then 'make' the binary file(s), which uses said compilers and libraries to generate a binary file - specific to your type of linux, kernel, and processor architecture - from the source code. The last part of the process is to install the binary file (if it's a module - bit like a windows service) using the command 'make install'. My comment in the last mail was a light-hearted poke at the previous author's order of proceedings, i.e. that you have to make the binary before you can install it. :) As for your sound system, make sure it's enabled in the control center and try to use different sound systems (ALSA, OSS etc) to see if it makes any difference. Make sure the relevant channels are not muted in your mixer application. (I use KDE, so for me it's kMix) If that's no use then try downloading and booting to a Knoppix CD or any other Live-CD linux system, and if the sound works on there make a note of the settings in any GUI application you can find relating to sound. Hope it helps, Mup. |
A Little More Info
*You may need to have your kernel sources ready!!*
The actual source you need is kernel-devel. Not kernel-headers nor kernel. It took me hours to figure this out! Thanks for getting me started, however! For Fedora, using yum, that's "yum install kernel-devel" :) |
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