alsa compiled fine but...

Googly · 02-25-2004, 07:19 PM

alsa compiled fine, the modules loaded fine, nothings complaining about /dev/dsp and when I type "cat /dev/dsp" and talk into my mic I see little symbols dance across the screen.

but there's still no sound
knowing it's set to mute by default I try running a mixer and stuff
and thats where the trouble begins...

alsaconf detects my card but says:

Code:

/usr/sbin/alsaconf: /etc/alsa/modutils/0.9: No such file or directory
cp: cannot stat '/etc/alsa/modutils/0.9: No such file or directory'
ERROR! /etc/alsa/modutils/0.9 could not be saved

and not only is there no /etc/alsa/modutils/0.9, there's no /etc/alsa either

alsactl doesn't detect any soundcards

amixer says: "Mixer attach default error: No such file or directory
alsamixer says: "function snd_ctl_open failed for default: No such file or directory

it seems to me like everythings looking in nonexistant places for stuff,
maybe somethings installed in an unusual location?

I'm running Debian 3 revision 2 stable with a
self-compiled 2.6.3 kernel with soundcard support but no alsa or oss built in
I didn't use the debian alsa packages but downloaded the alsa source from alsa-project.org

my soundcard is intel8x0 and its some AC97 onboard thingy

earlier with the 2.4.18-bfwhatever kernel I didn't even get this far
and someone suggested compiling my own kernel so I did.

thanks for reading my long post

quatsch · 02-25-2004, 07:45 PM

Did you install alsa-utils as well? I think you need to install that and you probably want to install the oss-compat thing as well. And for good measure, alsa-libs.

I think the problem is that the alsa-conf you have on your system is for an older version than the drivers you've installed.

Googly · 02-25-2004, 10:02 PM

I already had the libs and the utils installed and up to date,
I downloaded the oss thingy but that didn't change anything.
can I possibly try changing volume settings w/o using a mixer or is that impossible?
thanks for the help.

quatsch · 02-25-2004, 11:15 PM

you can change the volume using aumix (if you have it).

btw, have you installed the module-init-tools? You need is to make kernel 2.6.3 work properly.

mi-c · 02-26-2004, 01:15 AM

Hello, Googly

I have exactly the same conf and the same problem

(

This evening I go back to the 2.4.18bf24 kernel and wait for something better ... this is not a solution, but I can'ot find an anwser anywhere ...

nbitaud · 02-26-2004, 03:33 AM

is your /etc/modprobe.conf is set up correctly? I have the same sound card with the 2.6.3 kernel and I haven't any problem, but I had some when begun to use 2.6.x kernel because I thought I always need /etc/modules.conf whereas it is useless now: you must use /etc/modprobe.conf instead

maroonbaboon · 02-26-2004, 04:57 AM

Hi Googly

Once you depart from the 'Debian way' of compiling/installing kernel and sound stuff you run in possible conflicts and incompatibilities. One problem I saw was that Debian expects ALSA to be started by the script /etc/init.d/alsasound, whereas installing ALSA from source expects to have it started from /etc/init.d/alsa.

I suspect that some problems people have with other distros come up this way too. For example, it seems like Mandrake comes with ALSA as standard, so compiling from the standard ALSA source could cause similar problems.

So you might have a look at your init scripts and see if that is the source of your problems.

Googly · 02-26-2004, 09:31 PM

okay I will try those things after windows-update finishes in 1.5 hours(i still use 98 for gaming)

I do have module-init-tools, it wouldn't let me compile the kernel until I downloaded it.

I do have aumix but none of the mixers are working, they seem to be looking for files where there aren't any.

that /etc/init.d thing llooks promising I will try that.

are there any good distro's that do things more normally?
debians good but I'm more of a install everything from source kinda person.

maroonbaboon · 02-27-2004, 12:12 AM

I'm not sure 'normal' exists in this context. There is all that stuff out there and the different distros take different approaches to tying it together.

For source distros, I tried a Gentoo install and it seemed very nice, but in the end went back to Debian. The instant gratification of apt-get was just too much to give up.

Linux from Scratch looks great too, but means delaying gratification even longer.

nbitaud · 02-27-2004, 01:38 AM

googly,
the only "distro" I found that does this in a normal way is LFS (and gentoo?). And if you prefer install things from sources, it can't be better ;-)

maroonbaboon,
I agree with you: LFS means REALLY delaying gratification even longer. I use it since one year and a half at home, and now I can't stand any other distro, for such kind of problem...