Audio not working anymore

robbbert · 05-05-2006, 04:35 PM

Hi, I'd transported my computer physically and after I'd plugged in any cables again, sound had stopped from working.

Symptoms and notes:

There doesn't seem to be any sound-related messages in the /var/log/messages log.
"lsmod" returns (amongst others)

Quote:

snd 55268 12 snd_ens1371,snd_rawmidi,snd_seq_device,snd_ac97_codec,snd_pcm_oss,snd_mixer_oss,snd_pcm,snd_timer

, and that should be OK.
When I run XMMS from a terminal and start to play a song, XMMS outputs,

Quote:

** WARNING **: oss_open(): Failed to open audio device (/dev/dsp): Device or resource busy
When I open the system menu "System --> Preferences --> Sound" and deactivate the option "Enable software sound mixing (ESD)" (the default setting is "activated"), XMMS won't output a warning anymore and - visually - plays that song (progressbar is progressing, equalizer is bouncing).
I'm sure that all amplifier/speaker cables are plugged in correctly, and I've also looked at the soundcard, which looks OK (plug plugged in and everything neatly fixed).
In the Device Manager, the sound card appears to be listed correctly ("Creative Sound Blaster AudioPCI128"), and I cannot find information that distinguishes it - regarding other devices - as "not working".
I've also read related threads and guides but didn't found a solution or further hints.
This is on Ubuntu Dapper.

Are there additional things I could do to analyse the problem?

Thanks indeed
robbbert

J.W. · 05-05-2006, 04:56 PM

I don't know if this will help or not, but one other thing to check is to make sure your permissions are OK

Code:

chmod 666 /dev/dsp
chmod 666 /dev/mixer

robbbert · 05-05-2006, 05:06 PM

Thank you. The permissions had been already set that way. I've applied your code but nothing changed.

Electro · 05-05-2006, 06:44 PM

Make sure esound is set as the output device in xmms and other programs or else you are going to get a lot of messages stating "Device or resource busy."

Software mixers like esound and the dmix library in ALSA are used when sound cards and their modules (drivers) do not have mixing capabilities. This means when not using software mixers, the sound card can only handle one PCM stream at a time.

robbbert · 05-06-2006, 02:42 AM

Thanks for the info on sound mixing. In XMMS' preferences, I've changed the output plugin from "OSS Driver 1.2.10 [libOSS.so]" to "eSound Output Plugin 1.2.10 [libesdout.so]" but nothing seemed to change. When being started, XMMS outputs,

Quote:

Message: device: default

- Would there be any means to diagnose a hardware issue?

robbbert · 05-06-2006, 02:58 AM

Thank you again - this is solved. That dummy called robbbert missed some hardware volume control. D'oh!