Hi guys,
I am new to the Linux operating System. I have recently installed Mandrake 9.1 and havent been able to configure sound.

My motherboard is an ASUS X Series (P4S533-MX-UAYZ) with on board sound - SoundMax Digital Audio. Sound works perfectly fine on Windows, but when I switch to Linux and play some music (mp3) on any of the players, there is no sound.

I even tried to check the system sound, and it even doesnt give out anything to me. I saw the xconfig file but it has no entry for sound,there are entries for all the other peripherals.

Help in this regard would be highly appreciated,
Regards,
Usman

As root, run /sbin/lspci to see if your sound card is being detected by Linux. As an example, the output from one of my systems is below. Note the line for "Multimedia audio controller"

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)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82801DB USB (Hub #1) (rev 01)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82801DB USB (Hub #2) (rev 01)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82801DB USB (Hub #3) (rev 01)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82801DB USB EHCI Controller (rev 01)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corp. 82801BA/CA/DB PCI Bridge (rev 81)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corp. 82801DB ISA Bridge (LPC) (rev 01)
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corp. 82801DB ICH4 IDE (rev 01)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corp. 82801DB SMBus (rev 01)
00:1f.5 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corp. 82801DB AC'97 Audio (rev 01)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Radeon R250 If [Radeon 9000] (rev 01)
01:00.1 Display controller: ATI Technologies Inc Radeon R250 [Radeon 9000] (Secondary) (rev 01)
02:04.0 RAID bus controller: Triones Technologies, Inc. HPT374 (rev 07)
02:04.1 RAID bus controller: Triones Technologies, Inc. HPT374 (rev 07)
02:05.0 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. USB (rev 50)
02:05.1 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. USB (rev 50)
02:05.2 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. USB 2.0 (rev 51)
02:06.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8139/8139C/8139C+ (rev 10)
02:07.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Texas Instruments TSB43AB23 IEEE-1394a-2000 Controller (PHY/Link)

Hi Gamu829, this is what i got by executing the command

U can see that the Multimedia controller is there...but still no sound, I have even checked the volume control whether its turned off to mute, but I dont have any sound yet.




00:00.0 Host bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SiS651 Host (rev 01)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SiS 530 Virtual PCI-to-PCI bridge (AGP)
00:02.0 ISA bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SiS962 [MuTIOL Media IO] (r ev 04)
00:02.5 IDE interface: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 5513 [IDE]
00:02.7 Multimedia audio controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SiS7012 PC I Audio Accelerator (rev a0)
00:03.0 USB Controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SiS7001 USB Controller (rev 0f)
00:03.1 USB Controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SiS7001 USB Controller (rev 0f)
00:03.2 USB Controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SiS7001 USB Controller (rev 0f)
00:03.3 USB Controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SiS7002 USB 2.0
00:04.0 Ethernet controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SiS900 10/100 Ethe rnet (rev 91)
00:0f.0 Communication controller: Rockwell International HCF 56k Data/Fax Modem (rev 01)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SiS650/651/M 650/740 PCI/AGP VGA Display Adapter

Don't know if this helps but I have sound blaster 5.1 card which after a reboot ALWAYS comes up as muted. However just unmuting from 'kmix' or the taskbar does not fix the problem. I also have to go into 'kmix' and change the levels on the speaker and the PCM or WAVE input lines before any sound is output. Saving these levels as the defaults does not seem to do any good so I have to go through this procedure after every boot/login
Also don't be fooled by just looking at the levels and thinking they are at the maximum you HAVE to change each of them before they take effect.

Try running "lsmod" as root to see what drivers are being loaded. Here is the output from one of my systems showing just the sound-realted modules:

Module Size Used by Not tainted
i810_audio 27624 1 (autoclean)
ac97_codec 14568 0 (autoclean) [i810_audio]
soundcore 6436 2 (autoclean) [i810_audio]

Also, what does /etc/modules.conf look like? Here are the sound-related entries from mine:

alias sound-slot-0 i810_audio
post-install sound-slot-0 /bin/aumix-minimal -f /etc/.aumixrc -L >/dev/null 2>&1 || :
pre-remove sound-slot-0 /bin/aumix-minimal -f /etc/.aumixrc -S >/dev/null 2>&1 || :

When i run Ismod, it says command not found.

This is what I get after executing etc/modules.conf
above snd-intel8x0 snd-pcm-oss
alias sound-slot-0 snd-intel8x0

However, I have checked the volumes at aumix and kmix, they were muted. I increased the volume levels to maximum, now the sound is audible....but it is not as loud, its barely audible

I run Mandrake 9.1 and my on board chip is SIS 7012 and my sound is ok.
I have the same /etc/modules.conf as you but I think you have to have these modules loaded as well:lsmod gives me
i810_audio 26248 0
soundcore 6276 0 [i810_audio]
ac97_codec 12488 0 [i810_audio]
Do you run lsmod as root??
I configured the sound card using the Mandrake Control Centre-Hardware-Soundcard-Configure Module-Run config tool.

Lachlan