Does anyone know of a site that tells you the up to date way of configuring ALSA? Everything I come across seems old or is too hard for me to understand. Yes, I have checked the ALSA website itself but the soundcore module doesn't even exist in the 2.6.9 kernel. As a second question, is OSS necessary in order to use ALSA. Getting my sound to work is giving me a headache. Thanks.

you don't need OSS, you can set OSS-emulation when configuring the kernel.
and have you tried " #alsaconf " to configure, and " #alsamixer " to unmute the sound ?
( after unmuting, use "#alsactl store " to store settings ).

egag

As to soundcore, compile the kernel with "sound support" as a module (M)

I tried alsaconfig just a while ago. It said it need pnp. I went back into make menuconfig to try and compile it in and I can't select the category. I don't know why. Does anyone know why I can't select plug and play?

Is it not present as an option, or is it there and you can't select it. Give us as much info as you can. What soundcard by the way? Using the kernel source sound modules or alsa-driver tarball?

Well, I figured out why couldn't select plug and play support. I needed to select ISA support first. I have no ISA slots though. Why do I need to select ISA support when I only have PCI slots? At least, I thought ISA was a slot type. Anyways, I compiled that into the kernel along with all the sound support (sound not as modules).
What do I need to do in order to get this stuff working now? I'm using a soundblaster AWE sound card. I have already compiled support for it into the kernel using the emu10k1 driver. What do I need to do next? Thanks.

I also ran alsaconf which reported back that it couldn't find a compatible card. Maybe because, I have my sound built into the kernel. I ran alsamixer and alsactl store in hopes that it would work anyway. I had no such luck. Both alsamixer and alsactl came with my distribution(slackware 9.1). Thanks again.

I figured I should also post my sound start up messages.
Advanced Linux Sound Architecture Driver Version 1.0.6 (Sun Aug 15 07:17:53 2004 UTC).
no UART detected at 0x1
Motu MidiTimePiece on parallel port irq: 7 ioport: 0x378
ALSA sound/drivers/mpu401/mpu401.c:138: specify port
ALSA device list:
#0: Dummy 1
#1: Virtual MIDI Card 1
#2:
I hope I'm not posting too much. If I am, sorry.

maybe better to compile all soundsupport as modules ( don't know if it's needed, but good for trouble-shooting ).
and for configuring the kernel, i think " make xconfig " gives a better view at things.
just put in all alsa stuff ( incl. oss-emulation ) as modules ( sound card support = module ).
then you can check wich modules are loaded ( or not ).

egag

I have taken the ALSA configuration completely out of the kernel. I then tried to run alsaconf only to get the report that it couldn't find any compatable devices. Any more ideas? Thanks.

are the sound-modules loaded ?
do a " #lsmod |grep snd " and see what comes out.

also look at " #lspci " to see if your card is detected

egag

I compiled the alsa-driver-1.0.7, alsa-lib-1.0.7, and alsa-utils-1.0.7. I used these commands
cd alsa-driver-1.0.7
./configure --with-cards=emu10k1 --with-sequencer=yes;make;make install
chmod a+rw /dev/dsp /dev/mixer /dev/sequencer /dev/midi
cd ..
cd alsa-lib-1.0.7
./configure;make;make install
cd ..
cd alsa-utils-1.0.7
./configure;make;make install
modprobe snd-emu10k1;modprobe snd-pcm-oss
modprobe snd-mixer-oss;modprobe snd-seq-oss
alsaconf
I know the make install copied alsaconf to the appropriet directory because it says 1.0.7. Now, what should I do?

I think I know what could be wrong now. I'm using a dell computer. On the ALSA website, they have specific instructions for compiling the soundblaster PCI X (Dell OEM) I bet windows detects the card as a soundblaster AWE. Lol, I hope this works. Thanks a lot egag.

also, take a look at the hcl. : [url]http://www.linuxquestions.org/hcl/showproduct.php?product=738[/url

edit : well, good luck, you'll get it working

egag

Sound server fatal error:
AudioSubSystem::handleIO: write failed
len = 3760, can_write = 3762, errno = 32 (Broken pipe)
This might be a sound hardware/driver specific problem (see aRts FAQ)

Everything compiled in exactly the same way, excpet I'm using the emu10k1x driver. The message above is what I get when I try to turn sound on in KDE. Help?