Before I begin, i'm a real newb here, so please, go easy on me...

I recently installed Slackware 9.0 and, for the most part, have been very pleased. I use KDE (since gnome, it seems, had some problems from the start), but whenever I start it up, it gives me an error that goes something like this:

Cannot find /dev/dsp
Will continue running sound through null device

I have an "Avance AC97 Audio" card (as dxdiag puts it), which i'm assuming is built into the motherboard, because its definitely not in any of my pci slots I've looked around the forums, but couldn't find an answer to any of the similar problems. If it involves modules (which i'm sure it will), then please help me out with those, and the tools used to configure/whatever them, as well, because as I said, i'm a heck of a newb.

If you need any extra info, i'll be glad to do what i can (but not for the time being... I need to reinstall slackware, because I installed some "salsa" driver which apparently screwed up my entire system)

Thanks for any and all help.

Oh yeah, one more thing: if anybody knows how to get the wheel to work on my mouse, i'd really appreciate it...

i've the same problem on mandrake linux 9.1 on SiS 7012 chip. someone replies me that i should write -
$chmod 755 /dev/dsp
at terminal. but the problem is that i even don't have the /dev/dsp file r directory present in the system.
i don't know how to create it.

sup guys, i am having the same problem. i also have ac97 onboard sis7012

hexbit has been graciously trying to help me fix it.

but, since i haven't gotten it to work quite yet i can't give any definitive help, but you can try some of the things hexbit has told me to try:

try recreating the device like this:

#mknod /dev/dsp/ c 14 3
#chmod 777 /dev/dsp

also, maybe you could post your lsmod and lspci

as for the wheel. id unno about slackware, but when i installed mandrake it asked me which kind of mouse i was going to use and you just have to make sure to check that it was a wheel mouse.

Ok, i looked around in /dev, and i do have the dsp file, so i guess there's no need to re-create it. I hadn't thought about checking and/or changing the permissions, though, and i'll try as soon as i reinstall (like i said, i screwed it up). As for lsmod and lspci, i'm guessing i should just enter those commands as root and see what comes up... but if not, i'll probably figure it out.

Thanks for your help so far, i'll be sure to post the results of your suggestions as soon as i can.

Just reinstalled, and have the same problem (not that i expected anything to be different). First I tried changing the permissions to 777, and when that didn't work, i recreated it using "mknod" like sk8guitar said, but that still didn't solve anything (btw, i also did the same to another file, dsp1, which i thought might also work. obviously, it didn't).

here's some of that other info you wanted:

# lsmod
Module Size Used by Not tainted
soundcore 3332 0 (autoclean)
printer 7040 0 (unused)
ohci1394 16264 0 (unused)
ieee1394 30828 0 [ohci1394]
uhci 24560 0 (unused)
usbcore 58144 1 [printer uhci]
pcmcia_core 38112 0
ide-scsi 8048 0
8139too 15272 1
mii 2240 0 [8139too]

# lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8375 [KM266] Host Bridge
00:01.0 PCI bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8633 [Apollo Pro266 AGP]
00:08.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Texas Instruments TSB43AB23 IEEE-1394a-2000 Controller (PHY/Link)
00:0a.0 Communication controller: Lucent Microelectronics LT WinModem (rev 02)
00:0b.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8139/8139C/8139C+ (rev 10)
00:11.0 ISA bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8233A ISA Bridge
00:11.1 IDE interface: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C586/B/686A/B PIPC Bus Master IDE (rev 06)
00:11.2 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. USB (rev 23)
00:11.3 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. USB (rev 23)
00:11.5 Multimedia audio controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8233 AC97 Audio Controller (rev 40)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV18 [GeForce4 MX 440 AGP 8x] (rev a2)

i'm not sure what much of that means, but i do see the sound card, which might help...

once again, thanks for everything

yeah, lsmod and lspci are both commands you do as root

i'm no expert but from rooting around with my system here are some things i've learned.

1. do a bit of research and find what drivers your soundcard uses. what i found with my "card" (its also built in, the SiS7012), is that the ac97 stuff i thought wsa the driver was really just an audio codec, not a driver. but yours will probably be different, because we have different sound cards.
2. check dmesg to see if there are any errors. and if there are post them
3. in kde you can check your sound information under information-->sound in the control center. i found in my system that my card wasn't getting the irq's right (beucase it was trying to get irq0 and it wasn't showing up in the irq list, which you can also check in control center under information under interrupts). apparently this is caused by something in the bios that is set to a certain operationg system. if you set that option to "other" or someting like that then it should clear up, or so people said. i don't have an option like that in my bios so i can't say from personal experience that its worked.


thats really all i can offer right now, cause i'm pretty new at linux myself. i have found that its best to really know whats going wrong before you startr to try and fix stuff. i've messed up more stuff trying to fix the wrong thing than i have trying to fix the right one, hahahhahah

also, what happens when you try and play something in xmms? does it play and just no sound comes out or does it give you any errors?

I'm running Slackware 9 and I'm getting the same problem. I tried running XMMS in the terminal, and this message displayed when I tried to play something:
** WARNING **: oss_open(): Failed to open audio device (/dev/dsp): No such device
mcop warning: user defined signal handler found for SIG_PIPE, overriding
/tmp/mcop-kimo is not owned by user
Xlib: unexpected async reply (sequence 0x2591)!

Also, the file moves along smoothly, but no sound comes out.

Well, i check dmesg, and there are no errors that i can see, so i guess it doesn't run into the problem while finding the card or anything... the only time i get an error at all is when i try to play something. For example, when i open xmms and try to play a song, it gives me that same error "can't find /dev/dsp (no such device)" and then fails to do anything. It doesn't play through without me actually hearing anything, it just sits there. I'll search around for the driver to my card, but i don't know where to start, so it might take a while...

Does it appear when you run Souncard Detection from 'System Settings'?

Well i'm not exactly sure where you're referring to, but in my "Sound System" configuration in KDE, I've tried all the available settings, including Autodetect, Threaded Open Sound System, and Open Sound System. With each, when i apply the new settings, i get the same error message. If you could elaborate on the Soundcard Detection thing, that would be great, becuase at the moment, linux is failing to recognize even the existence of a sound card, and if i could make it find one, then that would be a huge jump forwards.

On my Redhat 9 installation it is listed under "System Settings" on the KDE / Gnome menu. I had problems to start with because I had not disabled the on-board sound card when installing Linux so it failed to use the plugged-in Soundblaster.

The Soundcard Detection program found the correct card everytime.

i've try for mknod command but it won't work. saying that arguments are not full. so i saw man pages then got the syntax
mknod /dev/dsp 14 3 c|b|p|u
where c-cgahracter device
b-block device
i got confused and give 'c' it won't work. then i deleted the /dev/dsp file. then tried to recreate it, but this time it won't create and told the major device is already used.
what will i do now?

probeall scsi_hostadapter ide-scsi
probeall usb-interface usb-ohci
above snd-intel8x0 snd-pcm-oss
alias sound-slot-0 ali5455

Actually, I solved this problem a while ago. I'm not sure how it will work on your system, but all i had to do was install all the necessary alsa packages. I would suggest going to their site, downloading the 3 files you'll need ("alsa-drivers, alsa-utils, and alsa-something else"), and following the directions on the site <i>very, very</i> carefully. should work fine.