Hello,

I have a soundmax AC97 intel8x0 onboard sound chipset, but no sound. I have
disabled PnP in my bios. I have installed all the alsa packages. My sound
card is detected correctly by draksound. It worked correctly under redhat 9,
which I have dumped in favour of Mandrake 9.1, which generally is working much better for me.

After running draksound, it loads the module i810_audio successfully, along
with mixer settings. However, when I run alsamixer, I get:

alsamixer: function snd_ctl_open failed for default: No such file or
directory

In dmesg, I get:

Intel 810 + AC97 Audio, version 0.24, 10:48:54 Jul 24 2003
PCI: Setting latency timer of device 00:1f.5 to 64
i810: Intel ICH5 found at IO 0xee80 and 0xe800, MEM 0xfebff400 and 0xfebff000,
IRQ 17
i810: Intel ICH5 mmio at 0xe10c4400 and 0xe10d7000
i810_audio: Primary codec has ID 0
i810_audio: Audio Controller supports 6 channels.
i810_audio: Defaulting to base 2 channel mode.
i810_audio: Resetting connection 0
i810_audio: Connection 0 with codec id 0
ac97_codec: AC97 Audio codec, id: ADS117 (Unknown)
i810_audio: AC\'97 codec 0 supports AMAP, total channels = 6

So, that seems fine. However, I notice while booting that snd.o fails to
load. lsmod shows the following, though:

i810_audio 27560 0
soundcore 6852 0 [i810_audio]
ac97_codec 12616 0 [i810_audio]

BUT, no snd.o to be found. (I think.) \"modprobe snd\" returns:

/lib/modules/2.4.21-0.25mdksmp/kernel/sound/acore/snd.o: unresolved symbol
snd_verbose_printk
modprobe: insmod /lib/modules/2.4.21-0.25mdksmp/kernel/sound/acore/snd.o
failed
modprobe: insmod snd failed

I am using 2.4.21-0.25mdksmp, and was using 0.13 until today, I think. Same
results with or without smp. Please let me know what this means and how to go
about fixing it.

Thanks so much in advance.

Chris

The alsamixer won't work because the sound modules that you have loaded aren't alsa modules.

First, I'd try using another mixer app. I'm not familiar with Mandrake or with the desktop that you are using but is there not another mixer application that you can try? This would be easier than using the alsa modules. Did you have the alsa modules installed under RedHat?

Second, if you really want to use the alsa modules then it looks like the packages that you installed may not be for the kernel that you are using. Try running (as root) "depmod -a" in a terminal and see if any errors are generated. If so then you will have to install the correct package to match your kernel. If no erros are generated then you could try to load the alsa modules manually by (in a terminal window as root):

1) rmmod ac97_codec
2) rmmod i810_audio
3) modprobe snd-intel8x0

If that works then go further:

4) modprobe snd-pcm-oss
5) modprobe snd-mixer-oss
6) modprobe snd-seq-oss

If all this works then try running the alsamixer. Note that you may not be able to remove the modules in 1) and 2) if there is an application that is trying to use sound (for example, your desktop may load a sound server on startup)

Ok, there is something loading the drivers that I cannot disable. I went right through all my services, turned off the event sounds, etc. I think it's just the modules loaded at boot.

HOWEVER, while I cannot execute the rmmod's you suggested, I reran draksound and changed my driver from ac97_codec to snd-intel8x0. Here is the result:

ALSA driver isn't running.
rmmod: module snd-intel8x0 is not loaded
Starting ALSA version none:/lib/modules/2.4.21-0.25mdksmp/kernel/sound/acore/snd.o: unresolved symbol snd_verbose_printk
modprobe: insmod /lib/modules/2.4.21-0.25mdksmp/kernel/sound/acore/snd.o failed
modprobe: insmod snd failed
/lib/modules/2.4.21-0.25mdksmp/kernel/sound/acore/snd.o: unresolved symbol snd_verbose_printk
modprobe: insmod /lib/modules/2.4.21-0.25mdksmp/kernel/sound/acore/snd.o failed
modprobe: insmod snd-intel8x0 failed
insmod'ing module snd-intel8x0 failed at /usr/lib/libDrakX/modules.pm line 61.

So, I don't know, but it seems to me that this issue has something to do with snd.o. However, this is basically an out-of-the-box installation, so I'd think that aspect should have been okay... I dunno. What do you think?

I'm not at all familiar with Mandrake, and the previous post looked like good advice. It certainly looks like you have a mismatch between kernel and alsa versions? Were they installed by the same package? It sound like it might be related to this post:

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/history/85010

Which modules are autoloaded are determined by /etc/modules.conf, which should reflect any changes made by the distro's configuration tools. You can also edit it by hand, but that does not always play well with the distro's way of doing things.

Thanks, but I cannot seem to get that to work. Here is some more info that seems to be relevant from dredging the newsgroups:

[root@localhost etc]# cat modules.conf

probeall usb-interface usb-uhci ehci-hcd
alias eth0 8139too
above snd-intel8x0 snd-pcm-oss
alias sound-slot-0 snd-intel8x0


[root@localhost dev]# modprobe emu10k1
/lib/modules/2.4.21-0.25mdksmp/kernel/drivers/sound/emu10k1/emu10k1.o.gz:
init_module: No such device Hint: insmod errors can be caused by incorrect
module parameters, including invalid IO or IRQ parameters.
You may find more information in syslog or the output from dmesg
modprobe: insmod
/lib/modules/2.4.21-0.25mdksmp/kernel/drivers/sound/emu10k1/emu10k1.o.gz
failed modprobe: insmod emu10k1 failed

[root@localhost dev]# /etc/rc.d/init.d/alsa start Starting ALSA version
none:/lib/modules/2.4.21-0.25mdksmp/kernel/sound/acore/snd.o: unresolved
symbol snd_verbose_printk modprobe: insmod
/lib/modules/2.4.21-0.25mdksmp/kernel/sound/acore/snd.o failed modprobe:
insmod snd failed

[root@localhost dev]# modprobe snd
/lib/modules/2.4.21-0.25mdksmp/kernel/sound/acore/snd.o: unresolved symbol
snd_verbose_printk modprobe: insmod
/lib/modules/2.4.21-0.25mdksmp/kernel/sound/acore/snd.o failed modprobe:
insmod snd failed

[root@localhost dev]# alsamixer

alsamixer: function snd_ctl_open failed for default: No such file or
directory


I have no /dev/dsp and no /dev/mixer. Others have suggested doing a chmod
666 on those to fix the problem. However, I obviously cannot.

The alsa driver source provides a script called 'snddevices' (it's a while since I last built alsa from source, so I'm guessing a bit here). This creates all necessary /dev files for alsa. Ordinarily if you are installing from packages you shouldn't have to worry about that, but your situation looks a bit suspicious.

But I don't see how this would explain the snd.o problem. That's what I would expect if the snd module was compiled for the wrong kernel version.

Well, I'm certainly happy to work with that.

I can't find precompiled rpms anywhere. I followed the instructions to the letter for building from source and it seemed to work well enough.

Basically, what do I do now?

Chris

You could try running the script and see if it changes anything.

If you built from source note that the kernel source (which alsa needs to compile) have to match the kernel you are actually running.

Searching for 'alsa-utils' on www.rpmfind.net gives a pointer to redhat/alsa RPMs at www.freshrpms.net. Unfortunately this site seems to be switched off as part of the protest against software patents, but from memory they have quite a good section explaining how to use these things.

However the links on the rpmfind results page seem to be operative, and the RPMs are available at

http://fr.rpmfind.net/linux/freshrpms/redhat/9/

As an apt-getter rather than an RPMist I can't give you much more advice on that front.

P.S. I see your running Mandrake, not RH. So I'm not sure if you will find an RPM to match your kernel. Or maybe there is a kernel package with alsa included (which would be a logical way to do things).

1) Make sure you run the script ./snddevices
2) Make sure you do
chmod a+rw /dev/dsp /dev/mixer /dev/sequencer /dev/midi
3) When compiling the drivers. Modify the following files:
a) alsa-kernel/include/core.h
Find the ifdef for snd_verbose_printk() function and removed the ifdef.
b) alsa-kernel/core/misc.c
Find the implementation of snd_verbose_printk() function and remove ifdef around it.
NOTE:
I also removed ifdef around snd_verbose_printd() methods in both files as well.

4) Now make; make install
5) modprobe your drivers...
6) I had to go into KDE Sound System and select something in order for it to work.

But now it works fine for me. I have a C-Media CM8738 onboard sound.

Good Luck
--ekiM

YAY!!!!!!!!!

Thanks! It worked right away. That's fantastic. I was contemplating switching back to RH9...

Anyway, one little hanger-on. Any ideas?

[root@localhost alsa-driver-0.9.6]# depmod -a
depmod: *** Unresolved symbols in /lib/modules/2.4.21-0.25mdksmp/kernel/sound/drivers/vx/snd-vx-lib.o
depmod: *** Unresolved symbols in /lib/modules/2.4.21-0.25mdksmp/kernel/sound/pcmcia/vx/snd-vx-cs.o

I don't know if it's important or not, but...

Thanks again!

Chris

Yeah I get those dependency problems as well. I haven't looked into it because, hey my sound is working now, and I can't spend anymore of my work day on it.

I think that the it just tries to resolve all dependencies for all modules it finds. These modules are probably not used, but they are in the path.

They didn't come up when I modprobed my modules, so I'd have to say these are probably okay.

If I do ever come across an issue with these I'll be sure to post them.

Cheers
--ekiM