I am a completely new Linux user. I have installed Fedora FC3 and am getting familar with the environment. Everything seems to be working except I have no sound. When I try the simple things like System Settings/Soundcard Detection, it detects my soundcard which is:
Vendor: Creative
Model: Labs [SB Live! Value] EMU10k1X
Module: snd-emu10k1
But then no test sound plays and it says audio will not be available.

After doing much looking around, apparently ALSA is not configured although it comes with the kernal (latest kernal from RHN updates). I am trying to play along here:
alsa dot opensrc dot org/index.php?page=TroubleShooting
/proc/asound/version tells me I have version 1.0.6 which is good
but when I check /proc/asound/cards I have no soundcard installed.

Can someone point me in the write direction or walk me through this? When I tried to go this route of home dot gagme dot com/greg/linux/fc3-tips.php I could not get past the editing of the files as they were read-only and I could not figure out how to unlock them.

Help?
Thanks -
Mike

On the command line (in a terminal in x or in a console)

su
<yourrootpassword>
alsaconf

The command is not found. I am trying to use Find fromteh terminal to see where alsa lives but am having trouble. I think my Paths are not set - when I needed to find my IP I tried ifconfg but had to type /sbin/ifconfg instead.

OK - figured it out from KDE. A generic search for alsa* gives 16 files, non of which is alsaconf, but there is alsa.conf

file:/etc/alsa
file:/etc/makedev.d/alsa
file:/usr/src/alsa
file:/etc/alsa/alsa.conf
file:/sbin/alsactl
file:/usr/sbin/alsactl
file:/usr/share/man/man1/alsactl.1.gz
file:/etc/dev.d/sound/alsa.dev
file:/usr/share/doc/alsa-lib-1.0.6
file:/usr/bin/alsalisp
file:/usr/bin/alsamixer
file:/usr/share/man/man1/alsamixer.1.gz
file:/usr/share/apps/noatun/alsaplayerui.plugin
file:/usr/lib/pwlib/device/sound/alsa.so
file:/usr/share/doc/alsa-utils-1.0.6

Will I need to grab something else from the alsa project?

Thanks for the assistance

One of the reasons I ditched rh, they like to replace standard tools with their own "improved" versions, and then name them something else so you can't find them. You might try redhat-configure-sound(or something like that), but that might just be the gui sound tool.

alsaconf is part of the standard alsa-utils package, along with alsamixer, alsctl and others.

I had the same problem although my environment is Fedora Core 2, and the hardware is different. The solution posted in the following worked perfectly:

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...+sound+Fedora+

If you are using GUI, the above posting may help. In my case, by right-clicking the speaker icon in the panel and selecting "Open volume control," and uncheck the "Mute" checkboxes for everything, and adjust the slide bars for "Volume" and "PCM-2" under the OSS tab worked just fine.

It does not seem to be something as simple as a mute being on. When running GNOME desktop, I have the volume indicator in the upper corner and it shows it at 0 volume - when I try to slide it up it just moves back down. I do not see a similar adjustment in KDE. I can try and reboot into GNOME and see if it is muted on a right-click though. But when I boot into KDE, I get this message:
Sound server informational message
Error while initializing the sound driver
device /dev/dsp can't be opened (no such file or directory)
Sound server will continue using null output device.

which leads me to think this is more than a mute problem, but I could be wrong. I can't get anything related to alsa to open.
When I try just running alsamixer out of /usr/bin I get:
alsamixer: function snd_ctl_open failed for default: No such device

Here are the dumps for /sbin/lspci, /sbin/lsmod, & cat /etc/modprobe.conf for my system:

/sbin/lspci -v:

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corp. 82865G/PE/P DRAM Controller/Host-Hub Interface(rev 02)
Subsystem: Dell: Unknown device 0151
Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0
Memory at e8000000 (32-bit, prefetchable) [size=128M]
Capabilities: [e4] Vendor Specific Information
Capabilities: [a0] AGP version 3.0

00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corp. 82865G/PE/P PCI to AGP Controller (rev 02) (prog-if 00 [Normal decode])
Flags: bus master, 66Mhz, fast devsel, latency 64
Bus: primary=00, secondary=01, subordinate=01, sec-latency=64
Memory behind bridge: fd000000-feafffff
Prefetchable memory behind bridge: f0000000-f7ffffff

00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) USB UHCI Controller#1 (rev 02) (prog-if 00 [UHCI])
Subsystem: Dell: Unknown device 0151
Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 0, IRQ 169
I/O ports at ff80 [size=32]

00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) USB UHCI Controller#2 (rev 02) (prog-if 00 [UHCI])
Subsystem: Dell: Unknown device 0151
Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 0, IRQ 177
I/O ports at ff60 [size=32]

00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) USB UHCI #3 (rev 02) (prog-if 00 [UHCI])
Subsystem: Dell: Unknown device 0151
Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 0, IRQ 185
I/O ports at ff40 [size=32]

00:1d.3 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) USB UHCI Controller#4 (rev 02) (prog-if 00 [UHCI])
Subsystem: Dell: Unknown device 0151
Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 0, IRQ 169
I/O ports at ff20 [size=32]

00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 02) (prog-if 20 [EHCI])
Subsystem: Dell: Unknown device 0151
Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 0, IRQ 193
Memory at ffa80800 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=1K]
Capabilities: [50] Power Management version 2
Capabilities: [58] Debug port

00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corp. 82801 PCI Bridge (rev c2) (prog-if 00 [Normal decode])
Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0
Bus: primary=00, secondary=02, subordinate=02, sec-latency=32
I/O behind bridge: 0000d000-0000dfff
Memory behind bridge: fcf00000-fcffffff

00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corp. 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 02)
Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 0

00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corp. 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) IDE Controller (rev 02) (prog-if 8a [Master SecP PriP])
Subsystem: Dell: Unknown device 0151
Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 0, IRQ 185
I/O ports at <ignored>
I/O ports at <ignored>
I/O ports at <ignored>
I/O ports at <ignored>
I/O ports at ffa0 [size=16]
Memory at febffc00 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=1K]

00:1f.2 IDE interface: Intel Corp. 82801EB (ICH5) SATA Controller (rev 02) (prog-if 8f [Master SecP SecO PriP PriO])
Subsystem: Dell: Unknown device 0151
Flags: bus master, 66Mhz, medium devsel, latency 0, IRQ 185
I/O ports at fe00 [size=8]
I/O ports at fe10 [size=4]
I/O ports at fe20 [size=8]
I/O ports at fe30 [size=4]
I/O ports at fea0 [size=16]

00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corp. 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) SMBus Controller (rev 02)
Subsystem: Dell: Unknown device 0151
Flags: medium devsel, IRQ 201
I/O ports at efe0 [size=32]

01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV18 [GeForce4 MX 440 AGP8x] (rev c1) (prog-if 00 [VGA])
Subsystem: nVidia Corporation: Unknown device 0191
Flags: bus master, 66Mhz, medium devsel, latency 64, IRQ 169
Memory at fd000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16M]
Memory at f0000000 (32-bit, prefetchable) [size=128M]
Expansion ROM at fea00000 [disabled] [size=128K]
Capabilities: [60] Power Management version 2
Capabilities: [44] AGP version 3.0

02:07.0 Multimedia audio controller: Creative Labs [SB Live! Value] EMU10k1X
Subsystem: Creative Labs: Unknown device 1003
Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 64, IRQ 169
I/O ports at df20 [size=32]
Capabilities: [dc] Power Management version 2

02:07.1 Input device controller: Creative Labs [SB Live! Value] Input device controller
Subsystem: Creative Labs: Unknown device 1003
Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 64
I/O ports at df18 [size=8]
Capabilities: [dc] Power Management version 2

02:0c.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corp. 82540EM Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 02)
Subsystem: Dell: Unknown device 0151
Flags: bus master, 66Mhz, medium devsel, latency 64, IRQ 185
Memory at fcfe0000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=128K]
I/O ports at df40 [size=64]
Capabilities: [dc] Power Management version 2
Capabilities: [e4] PCI-X non-bridge device.
Capabilities: [f0] Message Signalled Interrupts: 64bit+ Queue=0/0 Enable

***

/sbin/lsmod:
odule Size Used by
parport_pc 27777 1
lp 14893 0
parport 40969 2 parport_pc,lp
autofs4 21701 0
i2c_dev 13249 0
i2c_core 25921 1 i2c_dev
sunrpc 136997 1
ipt_REJECT 10433 1
ipt_state 5825 1
ip_conntrack 45701 1 ipt_state
iptable_filter 6721 1
ip_tables 20929 3 ipt_REJECT,ipt_state,iptable_filter
button 10449 0
battery 12485 0
ac 8773 0
md5 8001 1
ipv6 235233 10
joydev 12545 0
uhci_hcd 32729 0
ehci_hcd 31941 0
emu10k1_gp 7617 0
gameport 8513 1 emu10k1_gp
snd_emu10k1 83529 0
snd_rawmidi 27109 1 snd_emu10k1
snd_pcm_oss 50809 0
snd_mixer_oss 20929 1 snd_pcm_oss
snd_pcm 89669 2 snd_emu10k1,snd_pcm_oss
snd_timer 27077 1 snd_pcm
snd_seq_device 11849 2 snd_emu10k1,snd_rawmidi
snd_ac97_codec 65169 1 snd_emu10k1
snd_page_alloc 13641 2 snd_emu10k1,snd_pcm
snd_util_mem 8641 1 snd_emu10k1
snd_hwdep 13125 1 snd_emu10k1
snd 54821 9 snd_emu10k1,snd_rawmidi,snd_pcm_oss,snd_mixer_oss,snd_pcm,snd_timer,snd_seq_device,snd_ac97_codec,sn d_hwdep
soundcore 12961 1 snd
e1000 80205 0
floppy 57297 0
dm_snapshot 20837 0
dm_zero 6337 0
dm_mirror 24989 2
ext3 117961 2
jbd 59353 1 ext3
dm_mod 56773 6 dm_snapshot,dm_zero,dm_mirror
ata_piix 12357 0
libata 44101 1 ata_piix
sd_mod 20289 0
scsi_mod 112009 2 libata,sd_mod

***

cat /etc/modprobe.conf:
alias eth0 e1000
alias scsi_hostadapter ata_piix
alias snd-card-0 snd-emu10k1
options snd-card-0 index=0
install snd-emu10k1 /sbin/modprobe --ignore-install snd-emu10k1 && /usr/sbin/alsactl restore >/dev/null 2>&1 || :
remove snd-emu10k1 { /usr/sbin/alsactl store >/dev/null 2>&1 || : ; }; /sbin/modprobe -r --ignore-remove snd-emu10k1
alias usb-controller ehci-hcd
alias usb-controller1 uhci-hcd


According to the alsamixer site, the snd-emu10k1 is the correct driver for my card. I have no idea what to do next - open for suggestions.

And one last bit of info. When I run Info Center in KDE. I get this:

Sound Driver:3.8.1a-98076 (ALSA v1.0.6 emulation code)
Kernel: Linux my localhost info... 2.6.9-1.681_FC3smp #1 SMP date info...
Config options: 0

Installed drivers:
Type 10 : ALSA emulation

Card config:
--- no soundcards ---

Audio devices: NOT ENABLED IN CONFIG
Synth devices: NOT ENABLED IN CONFIG
Midi devices: NOT ENABLED IN CONFIG

Timers:
7: system timer

Mixers: NOT ENABLED IN CONFIG

And one last thing.... I have been checking the other forums and threads that were linked. This may be a snd-emu10k1 vs snd-emu10k1x problem with the SB Live! Value cards. If this is the case, I have no idea how to modify conf files, re-compile a kernel or any of those things. I have been using FC3 off and on for just a few weeks now. Thanks again all.

Ok, looks like the card hasn't been configured in alsa. Ordinarily, one would use the alsaconf program but rh in all its wisdom decided you didn't need it. The easiest way to get it would be to download and compile the alsa-utils-1.0.6 source tarball from the alsa site. I would stay with 1.0.6 as that is apparently what your alsa-driver and alsa-libs is.

The emu10k's do seem to give a lot of trouble with alsa. The only other chip that seems to be as problematic are the au88x0's. (Yep, I have an aureal chip. Lucky us. ) I suspect it all boils down to drivers that aren't fully debugged, but I can't prove it.

OK - so I went to the ALSA site and downloaded alsa-utils-1.0.6.tar.bz2. I tried to extract them to a folder I created in /etc/alsa but I did not have permission (running KDE desktop). I tried opening a terminal and becoming root, but apparently permissions don't carry over to the GUI. Could you walk me through what I do next here?

First off, you can do most of this a normal user. I usually create a directory called build, with 777 permisions. Say either /build or /home/<username>/build. I'll use /build for example. cp the tarball (tar.bz2) file into build (/build/alsa-utils-1.0.6.tar.bz2 . Then on a command line:

cd /build
tar -jxvf alsa-utils-1.0.6.tar.bz2

This will expand the download into directory tree: /build/alsa-utils-1.0.6/

cd alsa-utils-1.0.6
./configure
make

Now you need to become root:
su
<yourrootpassword>
make install

Here is what I get after ./configure:

checking for a BSD-compatible install... /usr/bin/install -c
checking whether build environment is sane... yes
checking for gawk... gawk
checking whether make sets $(MAKE)... yes
checking for gcc... no
checking for cc... no
checking for cc... no
checking for cl... no
configure: error: no acceptable C compiler found in $PATH
See `config.log' for more details.

I can't Make after that as no makefile is created. Also, when I tried to create /build at the file level, I did not have permission to do so. Becoming root in terminal made no difference as far as I could tell. What is going on there?
I very much appreciate you assistance here and the time you are spending to help.

Looks like you don't have a compiler installed. Rh used to call this the "developement" components back along rh8 or 9. Back then the easiest way to install the devel suite was to boot off cd #1 and do an "install upgrade", but I'm not familiar with the fedora versions so maybe there is a better way. Someone who uses fc want to jump in?

yae that Dell
snd-emu10k1x is like the win modem of sound blasters