I have installed openSUSE 11.0 on my desktop machine. On booting, the sound card does not seem to function. There are no system sounds and I cannot play any audio CDs, etc. However, if I start Yast and simply go into the sound configuration, or if I run speaker-test, the sound suddenly starts to function. Following speaker-test, CDs play, etc. I emphasize that I make no configuration changes, I simply run speaker-test and the sound starts to work. Can someone tell me what this process does that triggers the sound to start working? Below are some details.

Distro: openSUSE 11.0
Kernel: 2.6.25.16-0.1-default

When I run lspci, the following line outputs for the sound card:
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) HD Audio Controller
(rev 02)

/etc/modprobe.d/sound contains the following lines:
alias snd-card-0 snd-hda-intel
alias sound-slot-0 snd-hda-intel

Output from lsmod | grep snd:

snd_pcm_oss 68992 0
snd_mixer_oss 35584 1 snd_pcm_oss
snd_seq 83600 0
snd_seq_device 26516 1 snd_seq
snd_hda_intel 497580 3
snd_pcm 115208 3 snd_pcm_oss,snd_hda_intel
snd_timer 45072 3 snd_seq,snd_pcm
snd_page_alloc 28688 2 snd_hda_intel,snd_pcm
snd_hwdep 28424 1 snd_hda_intel
snd 96248 12 snd_pcm_oss,snd_mixer_oss,snd_seq,snd_seq_device,snd_hda_intel,snd_pcm,snd_timer,snd_hwdep
soundcore 26000 1 snd


Thank you in advance...

October 31, 2008

Hi

I recommend that you take a look at
http://en.opensuse.org/SDB:AudioTroubleshooting

when you execute speaker-test
(speaker-test -Dplug:front -c2 -l5 -twav)
are you executing it as root or as a regular user ?

The reason I ask is that (according to the above documentation) if you are able to hear sound as root, but not as a regular user, then it may be related to a regular user permissions problem. (The regular user will have to be added to the "audio group").

ie. Running speaker-test as a regular user make work but the permissions are not updated, the fix is temporary, and the effect is lost when you logout of X and log back in again.

The procedure is documented in the above web page.

Be sure to logout of X and login again in order to check the persistence of the permission changes.

I hope that helps.

regards

Chris