Hi Im using Ubuntu Feisty Fawn and Im having a problem I hope someone here can help out with. Just so you know Im a noob to linux but have been around PCs since the DOS days, jeez I still have an Atari 1200xl collecting dust in a closet, so Im not afraid to tinker but this is just driving me nuts.

My soundcard is an Audigy 4.

I had working sound in all system sounds and multimedia apps (xmms, totem, rhythmbox) and now I dont. When I test them (login, logout, warning, etc) in sound options, nothing. And now I only get sound from amarok and vlc.

I have tried purging the drivers with info from this link http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=205449 and reinstalling them but still the problem persists. I tried running alsamixer and got this error:

In xmms I get an error box that says:

What could be blocking the sound card? If this is it at all how would I check?

Also when I use gedit from the command prompt to edit I get the following. I also included the command I used (nothing special just figured Id put it there).


Ive gotten sound to work in the apps by changing the sound from alsa to oss in everything in System > Pref > Sound > Device tab but I still get the above error and I have no system sounds except the drum sound when the username screen comes up, but not the startup sound I used to get after typing my username /password and logging in.

Is it possible to not use alsa at all and just use OSS or are they interconnected?

Have you checked if you really have this file ? Maybe, you just need to clean up all the alsa* files (backup before you do) and reinstall alsa.

I'd suggest going for ALSA as, ALSA has the best sound support in linux. As far as OSS is concerned, it depends upon if you are using the OSS modules or the OSS emulation provided by ALSA in which case it again depends on ALSA libs.

Are you sure alsa is loaded at all? I had something similar running Debian; it turned out that an update had caused some confusion and the system started using OSS instead of alsa after that. Just click on the speaker icon on the menu bar, select Volume Control and verify which is actually running. The .so error message would seem to suggest that alsa really isn't loaded.

Thanks so much for answering my post, Im desperate and as much as I dont want to Ive contemplated abandoning Ubuntu and sticking to XP, which I really dont want to do.

I cant find the file or directory its looking for. I wish I had a way to completely remove ALSA and start from scratch. I tried but this also removes gdm and ubuntu-desktop.

When I it reinstalls everything I purged not just gdm and ubuntu-desktop.

I also think there is a problem with ESD which I think is causing my problem of no system sounds.

I played with it today trying to get it working and had no luck. I did run ALSA-INFO and have the output if you can make heads or tails of it.

The output is here:
http://pastebin.ca/611791

How would I cleanup all the alsa files? and being so new to Linux what should I use to back up? I am running a dual boot with XP on one SATA hard drive and Ubuntu FF on an IDE drive.

I thought about reinstalling ubuntu completely but dont want to do that because there are somethings I have just the way I want them, like sharing my thunderbird email profile between XP and Ubuntu on a FAT32 part and a few other things I just dont want to have to do over.

Thank you as well for taking the time to read and respond to my post. If you need anything else to help me troubleshoot this let me know.

I opened the volume control and it says in the title bar Audigy 4 [SB0610] (Alsa mixer)

Also here is a copy of the output of ALSA-INFO

The script uploaded it here.
http://pastebin.ca/611791

Can you do

lsmod

as root and verify whether the modules for your audio device are really loaded?

If not, try

modprobe [module name(s)]

and see whether it makes a difference.

Btw, I see you removed some stuff but did you actually inspect alsa-lib(s) as well? I do seem to recall such a thing exists - and it's vital.

I see them there and Ive tried modprobe and still no working properly. I decided to bite the bullet and reinstall completely and set everything up again. Im pretty close to just saying forget it to linux altogether. But Im going to see if it happens again on a new install.

I missed your responses as I didn't come online until today.

I see you are going to resinstall ubuntu. Come back and post if you could get sound working.

If you haven't started reinstall, may be you could post the contents of your log. Post the output of "lsmod" and "locate alsa".

In either case you might find these guides useful.

http://www.alsa-project.org/alsa-doc...module=emu10k1
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/HdaIntelSoundHowto

The second HOWTO is for Intel HDA, still the instructions for installing and configuring alsa can be used for your setup. You just need to mind what is necessary for your soundcard, the information for which is available on the first link I've provided.

Let us know if you could get things working.

Just picked up this thread and don't know if you have tried this: When I upgraded to Feisty I found I had no sound (it had worked fine previously). After much frustration I found the following: If you single click on the speaker icon you get a single volume control, BUT if you DOUBLE click on the same icon a window opens displaying multiple volume controls and mute/unmute icons. You can add additional controls by selecting EDIT=>Preferences. In my case I discovered that PCM was muted. When I unmuted it, my sound was fine. Hope maybe this helps.

Jack

It may also help to run alsaconf as root.... assuming that it is being loaded, it may not be set up with the correct driver, and alsaconf will fix that

Thanks to all for the help. I reinstalled and it works now. Now to figure out why I freeze completely when playing video. Damn ATI drivers