No sound in Gentoo with Intel AC'97 audio

lintnuts · 01-01-2007, 05:52 PM

I have a Dell Inspiron 600m and am trying to get Gentoo working on it. I compiled everything from source and so far everything is working except for sound. In KDE, the Control Center and media applications don't see any sound devices. My USE flags did not include "alsa". I hope that's not a problem?

I tried using a Ubuntu LiveCD, and sound works fine with their autodetection. I compiled snd_intel8x0 as a module and loaded it, and below are the relevant console outputs. I've also tried emerging alsa-headers, alsa-lib, and alsa-utils and ran alsaconf, but that didn't do anything either.

sound-related lspci:

Code:

00:1f.5 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) AC'97 Audio Controller (rev 01)
00:1f.6 Modem: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) AC'97 Modem Controller (rev 01)

sound-related lsmod for working Ubuntu LiveCD:

Code:

Module                  Size  Used by
snd_intel8x0           30144  1 
snd_ac97_codec         72188  1 snd_intel8x0
snd_pcm_oss            46368  0 
snd_mixer_oss          16128  1 snd_pcm_oss
snd_pcm                78344  3 snd_intel8x0,snd_ac97_codec,snd_pcm_oss
snd_timer              21764  1 snd_pcm
snd                    48644  8 snd_intel8x0,snd_ac97_codec,snd_pcm_oss,snd_mixer_oss,snd_pcm,snd_timer
soundcore               9184  1 snd
snd_page_alloc         10120  2 snd_intel8x0,snd_pcm

sound-related lsmod for NON-working Gentoo:

Code:

Module                  Size  Used by
snd_intel8x0           17052  0
snd_ac97_codec         60832  1 snd_intel8x0
snd_ac97_bus            1152  1 snd_ac97_codec
snd_pcm                39048  2 snd_intel8x0,snd_ac97_codec
snd_timer              10244  1 snd_pcm
snd                    23652  4 snd_intel8x0,snd_ac97_codec,snd_pcm,snd_timer
snd_page_alloc          4232  2 snd_intel8x0,snd_pcm

uname -r:
2.6.18-gentoo-r6

Emerson · 01-01-2007, 05:58 PM

Welcome to LQ!

You better add alsa USE flag now and recompile everything affected. You can leave out aRts, ESD and OSS.

lintnuts · 01-01-2007, 06:25 PM

So the lack of an alsa USE flag was the problem?

What's the best way to recompile everything affected? I'm not sure what the relevant packages are. I only emerged kde-meta and some small applications. I don't mind having to recompile kde-meta again even though it's going to take a long time.

I updated /etc/make.conf to include alsa in the USE and then tried "emerge -pvuN kde-meta" and it says "Total size of downloads: 0 kB"

What should I do?

Thanks for the reply.

Emerson · 01-01-2007, 06:29 PM

emerge -avND world

lintnuts · 01-01-2007, 10:08 PM

About 40 packages were re-emerged with the alsa USE flag set, but the sound still doesn't work.

I did notice that snd_intel8x0 module says used by 2 now when I'm in KDE. I don't remember if I was in KDE earlier when I got the lsmod output in the first post.

Code:

Module                  Size  Used by
snd_intel8x0           17052  2

Emerson · 01-02-2007, 09:29 AM

What application are you using, can you get kmplayer to play? You may need to configure your apps to use alsa. I'm not a KDE expert and I've never used aRts myself. I believe there are lots of tutorials how to get sound in the KDE.
Google/Linux is your friend.
And bookmark this page now.
Also Gentoo wiki is useful.

lintnuts · 01-02-2007, 12:42 PM

I tried kmplayer, and what I noticed is that if I drag the KMix volume bar up, I can hear the songs I play in kmplayer, but the volume automatically drops down to 0% within a second. So perhaps this is actually a software configuration issue? KDE Control Center error is "Unable to start the sound server to retrieve possible sound I/O methods."

I've tried setting the volume in alsamixer and then saving the settings with "/etc/init.d/alsasound save" before logging into KDE, but once I get into KDE the volume resets to 0% again. I've also tried alsamixer from a Konsole when in KDE and it behaves just like KMix, with the volume dropping itself down to 0%.

In the screenshot, the big gray Volume box in the center of the screen stays on top of other windows and never goes away.

http://img162.imageshack.us/img162/6...apshot1jh1.png

Emerson · 01-02-2007, 12:50 PM

Are you tring to use aRts or you decided to stay ALSA-only? There are ways not to use aRts in the KDE, some people do not like it, some even say it's evilware.

lintnuts · 01-02-2007, 12:55 PM

I went with alsa. I included -arts in my USE flags.

Emerson · 01-02-2007, 01:20 PM

KDE control center is useless then. As I said I'm not a KDE user myself. I believe there is a tutorial in Gentoo forums how to set up KDE without aRts.
OTOH, you compiled everything without arts support, if arts itself is still running it may be the source of problems.

lintnuts · 01-02-2007, 02:29 PM

On alsa-project.org for snd-intel8x0, it says that "You must turn on the sound support soundcore module." However, I couldn't find this in the kernel options and so it's not compiled as a module. Could this be the problem? In the first post, you can see that the working Ubuntu LiveCD sound had a "soundcore" module loaded that was used by snd.

Emerson · 01-02-2007, 02:50 PM

I do not think this is your problem. I think ALSA is working. Unfortunately I'm unable to help you from memory and I have no Linux box here to experiment with.

Electro · 01-02-2007, 02:57 PM

In Gentoo, make sure you emerged alsa-lib, alsa-utils, and alsa-headers. After that, type alsamixer and adjust the settings. If you want every program include ALSA, backup your installation (just in case). Second run emerge --sync. After that add USE="alsa" to /etc/make.conf. Then type emerge -uavDN world. Depending on your computer specs, it will take a day to a week to finish. You can try to emerge genlop and then type emerge -upvDN world | genlop -p to get an estimate how long it will take.

When you first install or setup ALSA, every mixer setting for your sound card is set to mute and loudness is set at 0%. After you got sound working, as root type alsactl store to save the settings. Do not use root log into GUI or you could damage your installation. Use a virtual terminal like konsole, xterm, gterm, rxvt, and many others. The use su to substitute yourself as root. The utility su is ok to use for now, but you may want to use sudo for the future because it is more secure than su.

It does help to have sound support set as a module in the kernel.

lintnuts · 01-03-2007, 10:36 AM

I started over with a stage3 install and installed Gnome and the sound worked, so using the exact same configuration files and steps installed KDE again from a stage3 and it has the same problem, which leads me to believe it has something to do with KDE? The only differences between the two installs were the USE flags, and they were only minor. Gnome differences were "-kde -qt3 -qt4 gnome gstramer firefox" and KDE differences were "kde qt3". alsa was included in the USE flags.

After emerging each desktop environment, I emerged alsa-headers, alsa-lib and alsa-utils, ran alsaconf, ran alsamixer, ran alsactl store to save the volumes, rc-update add alsasound boot, rebooted.

Emerson · 01-03-2007, 12:03 PM

As I said before, running arts daemon can cause problems. And you need to configure all your apps to use ALSA, one by one.