Sound not working with Kernel 2.6, ALSA, FC1, C-media 8738
 

I compiled Kernel 2.6.3 with the ALSA module and c-media 8738 chip support, under Fedora Core 1. Everything is working great except for the sound. With the old kernel (2.4) I had sound via OSS. I have not touched anything about sound since the new kernel was installed. There is a little GStreamer applet in my preferences menu with options to change from OSS to ALSA. If I leave OSS, there is this error in audio apps like rhythmbox: "osscommon: Cannot access /dev/dsp, does it exist ?", with ALSA instead I get no errors and audio seems to play, but there is no sound. When I click the volume tray icon (Gnome) I get this "Couldn't open mixer device /dev/sound/mixer", in preferences there is not a single audio channel to choose. I downloaded the "alsaconf" tool, but it didn't detect the card (I don't know if it should be run in a special folder, I executed it in /root). I found the soundcard driver in this location "/lib/modules/2.6.3/kernel/sound/pci/snd-cmipci.ko". The "alsamixer" command also displays an error: "alsamixer: function snd_ctl_open failed for default: No such device". Tell me if you need this files: "modprobe.conf", "modules.conf", "modprobe.conf.dist". Thanks in advance!

well I had the very same problem with the very same sound system on an Asus M/B when I first tried out a 2.6 kernel with Suse 9. It turned out that the module was not loaded at boot. I fixed it through yast - just ordered the module by that name to be loaded on boot. I don't know how these things are done in FC though and the startup scripts are quite different in Suse. Try and find how you can pass this option to load the module on boot cause 99,9% that's your problem right there.

...or you could re-compile the kernel with the module compiled in the kernel.;)

Could you post the output of `lsmod` and the contents of 'modprobe.conf' ?

I had this exact same problem moving from the 2.4 to 2.6 kernels with FC1 on an ASUS board with a cmedia pci driver. It was in fact resolved by loading the correct modules... I fixed it by trial and error using `modprobe` and restarting X. OSS utlimately ended up working for me.

Download the alsa-driver package from the Alsa homepage and extract it. Run the snddevices script as root to create the necessary device nodes. Then try loading the sound modules.

You could also grab the script here.


Håkan

Some sound, but still not there yet...
 

I recompiled the kernel with ALSA included (not module), and I also put in OSS support. Now I have a half-working sound system. MP3's and OGG's play normally in any audio player, but I get no sound for system events (login, logout, etc) and also when I play a WAV file an error displays that it is a RIFF file, so I rename it and then I get the inverse of that (this RIFF appears to be a WAV). I think those two issues are related anyway, I have not tried to use an MP3 for a system event. It seems that sound is working through OSS and not ALSA. I really don't care what sound system I'm using in order to get sound, but it is not quite right yet. Here are my hardware files for you to check.

This was my original modprobe.conf :

alias usb-controller ehci-hcd
alias eth0 via-rhine

then I added some lines I found researching the ALSA website (not sure if they helped) :

alias usb-controller ehci-hcd
alias eth0 via-rhine
# ALSA portion
alias char-major-116 snd
alias snd-card-0 snd-cmipci
# module options should go here

# OSS/Free portion
alias char-major-14 soundcore
alias sound-slot-0 snd-card-0

# card #1
alias sound-service-0-0 snd-mixer-oss
alias sound-service-0-1 snd-seq-oss
alias sound-service-0-3 snd-pcm-oss
alias sound-service-0-8 snd-seq-oss
alias sound-service-0-12 snd-pcm-oss

This is "lsmod" output : (sorry, cannot get it tabbed right)

Module Size Used by
ide_cd 41988 0
cdrom 38752 1 ide_cd
ipv6 248128 8
lp 11912 0
autofs 17152 0
via_rhine 21256 0
mii 5056 1 via_rhine
floppy 58900 0
sg 38368 0
scsi_mod 119224 1 sg
parport_pc 25340 1
parport 44136 2 lp,parport_pc
ehci_hcd 24836 0
usbcore 104028 3 ehci_hcd
thermal 13648 0
processor 13412 1 thermal
fan 3980 0
button 6104 0
ext3 119464 2
jbd 61016 1 ext3

I don't understand a thing of that, but if you do please let me know. Any other file you need, just ask. I'm going to get the packages hw-tph said meanwhile. Thanks again.

In order for several different applications to be able to play sounds at the same time you need a sound server such as eSound (Enlightenment/Gnome standard) or aRTs (KDE standard). The sound server claims the sound card and acts as a software mixer so you can play back mp3's and have system sounds at the same time.

If you already get the modules to load and work you shouldn't run the script I linked to above. I did that assuming that you were having the very same problems you wrote about in your original post.


Håkan