I am running Mandrake 10 Final on a Dell P4, 2.66 ghz, 512 DDR ram.

My soundcard is a Sound Blaster Live! Value, I am using ALSA, it was installed/configured automatically by Mandrake. I know the snd-emu10k1, emu10k1, and soundcore kernel modules are loaded. The soundcard works fine from Linux and is listed as supported on the ALSA website.

I have unmuted everything (From KMix), I know Linux has some control over it as for anything said into my mic immediatly comes out the speakers and changing volumes in KMix affects it.

I have tried running alsa config but it hasn't done anything.

From KDE control center for aRTs if I set my soundsystem to ALSA and setdevice location /dev/dsp I get a device cannot be opened for playback error message but the device is there, ownership is root:audio, tried both 666 and 777, I am a member of the audio group. I have tried auto-detect soundsystem, disabling full duplex, and default device, I still get the same error.

Anyone have any suggestions?

Thanks in advance

NOTE: Sound does not work on startup, from Totem, XMMS, or anything else. From XMMS I have tried OSS, ALSA and aRTs output all with the same result.

EDIT: I have also run alsaconf with no effect.

bump

Hey... I just recently got my SBLive (silly Dell version) working. I just compiled a new kernel (2.6.6) with ALSA and OSS as modules in the hopes that everything would play nice. Basically, nothing worked and I was in the same place as you. My eventual solution was to recompile the kernel with no sound support and then just install OSS / ALSA by hand afterwards. I think you should only really need the OSS emu10k1 drivers to actually produce sound, but some programs require all manner of other things (ie I have Esound installed too for Enlightenment). Oh, AFAIK you absolutely need the OSS drivers to get a *Dell* SBLive to work, b/c they rolled their own drivers or did some fancy tweaking just to keep us linux folks on our toes. So, a few questions.... what kernel are you running (and is it vanilla / self-compiled)? and have you tried listening to an audio test from within the oss-install program? That was my first sign that I was on the right track. If that doesn't work at all, I would suggest unloading the modules and trying again. I run Slack (and I've never tried the Drake) so I am not sure if it is exactly the same. Let me know...

Mandrake 10 doesn't come with OSS and I haven't found a way to get it. The Mandrake control centre gives me a list of 3 drivers, snd-emu10k1, emu10k1, and audigy. Tried them all with the same problem.

BTW, it is the Mandrake customized kernel, compiled by them.

Dell is trying to be Linux friendly, maybe if enough of us send e-mails they'll make a driver.

http://www.4front-tech.com/opensound.html

You can get oss from there and install. Perhaps Dell does have a solution for this. I never did check their website. There are some threads around about the Dell SBLive. I found this:
http://how.to/sblive
which is what initially directed me to OSS. The OSS software is easy to install. I had absolutely no problems and my sound was working shortly after.