I am a real newbie but have managed to get Debian Sarge running well except I have been trying for the last two weeks to get sound to work. I have run ALSA and it fails saying "cannot find SYMTAB (or something similar). I have unmuted the volume control and added the user to the audio group. My sound card is integrated and is reported as SIS SI7012 by Kmix.

Any help would be appreciated - Thanks

Dave Harper
A Brit in Spain

If you are running ALSA, can you run at the command line? If so, does it show everything muted? Try that first and post back.

Thanks. Surround, line-in and mic are muted. master is 100, line is 100 and CD is 90. Master M is 0. I increased Master M to 100 but still no sound.

Other information
Card SiS SI7012
Chip C-Media Electronics CMI9738
View Playback
Item Master [off]

Don't know what's wrong but here's some stuff to try:

Do
$ cat {large text file} > /dev/dsp

In the unlikely event that you get a loud hiss the thing is working.

Also try it as root.

Run the program sndconfig. It might fix it or tell you what's wrong.

If it's an IRQ problem put the sound card in another slot.

Is there a sound driver (kernel module) installed? Should think doing
$ dmesg would say. (If you're very new then the way you scroll back through its output is shift+page up). Install correct module with modconf. Work out correct one by looking at sound card and googling/linux, especially number on largest chip.

No experience of alsa but if it isn't working isn't that likely to be a problem?? Uninstall it. Install something like aumix.

Hope some help.

I ran sndconfig and got the following message. I'm running kernel 2.6.7

│ You don't seem to be running a kernel with modular sound │
│ enabled. (soundcore.o was not found in the module search path). │
│ To use sndconfig, you must be running a kernel with modular │
│ sound, such as the kernel images shipped with Debian Linux or │
│ a 2.2 or greater kernel.

More info

I ran "modinfo soundcore" and got this

LinExEmpresa:~# modinfo soundcore
filename: /lib/modules/2.6.7/kernel/sound/soundcore.ko
description: Core sound module
author: Alan Cox
license: GPL
alias: char-major-14-*
vermagic: 2.6.7 preempt 586 gcc-3.3
depends:
LinExEmpresa:~#

Err.... Jungian synchronism - I just got that message with Knoppix.

Don't know but you might try doing:
$ locate soundcore
to see if you've got the module on the computer: is it called soundcore.o? It's be surprising if it wasn't there.

Then use 'modconf'. Go to the sound sections and, probably in the first one, select it and choose to install the soundcore thing.

Then, with luck, it should work, ?may need to reboot. If not run sndconfig again.

Ran "locate soundcore". Got message "/var/locate/locatedb: no such file or directory"

modconf gave "command not found"

same for sndconfig

Now I'm really confused. Maybe it's this Jungian thing or I'm just dumb!

run (as root) "updatedb", then try again.

Now it works fine. Thanks to everyone for their help!