Sound in Slackware
 

Please excuse the newbie question. Ok, so I have Slackware 8.1 set up properly, kde works, etc, but the problem i have is that i have no idea how to configure the sound card. from doing /sbin/lspci -v i found out i have the following card: http://www.linuxquestions.org/hcl/sh...hp?product=651 . Now i have no idea what to do next to set it up.

Thanks, Nick

you basically need to unmute the sound.
try running "kmix" in kde, or alsamixer as root to unmute the sounds.

.stan

thanks for the suggestion, but that wasnt it. i opened kmix, then tried to play a cd, and still no sound.

do you have alsa installed If so run alsaconfig as root that should set it up your sound for you. then run alsamixer to set the volume

no i dont have alsa, what exactly is it?

alsa is a sound server.
http://www.alsa-project.org/
Read there for a bit more description.

i have the same sound chip running on slackware 9.1 perfectly...

i know slackware 9.1 comes with alsa support out-of-the-box, perhaps 8.1 doesn't...

alsa-utils (i think that's what the package is called) comes with a tool called "alsaconf"... basically you just run "alsaconf" and it detects and sets-up your sound card... then you usually just run "alsamixer" to set the volume and then "alsactl store" to store the settings...

what should i do if alsaconfig returns that it can not find any sound cards? by the way, my /sbin/lspci -v sais the following about my sound card:

try this (it works on my box, with the same card):

modprobe snd-cmipci


that's for alsa, i think for oss (the old standard) it would be like:

modprobe cmpci


have you thought about upgrading to slackware 9.1??? IT'S VERY GOOD.

=)

hey thanks, modprobe cmpci worked, and now i can adjust the volume with the sound mixer that comes with linux, but still when i play a cd, etcf there is no sound :(

okay if "modprobe cmpci" works but "modprobe cmipci" doesn't, then that probably means you're using oss instead of alsa...

=(


what are you using to play cds???

make sure the analog audio cable from the cd to the soundcard is correctly hooked-up...

but if you're using xmms to play cds make sure it's configured to use the oss output plugin and make sure you have a cd-reading plugin enabled... remember you don't mount audio cds so you wouldn't look for the songs in /mnt/cdrom but instead in /dev/cdrom, for example...

once again, i'd strongly suggest upgrading to slackware 9.1, if you can... it's well worth it...

do the kde/gnome sounds work???

hmm strange, sounds for things like aMSN work, but i dont hear any sounds while using kde, and io still cant hear playing cd's :(

about upgrading to 9.1, does it take alot of time, and would i ahve to reconfigure everything again?

in kde's control center there's a part for configuring the sound system... try playing with that...



slackware 9.1 usually manages to configure your audio, video, and network automagically during the install with almost no human intervention, so i'd have to say it's really not very painful to install...

in a way, it's even easier than mandrake... lol...

hey thanks, il take a look at sound config.
but what i meant with is it hard it setup, is will i have to reformat, etc, then install fresh, or can ijust upgrade from 8 to 9.1?

i'm not sure if you can "upgrade" slackware from 8.x to 9.1, but it might be possible...

perhaps one of the other subscribers to this thread knows how that works...

honestly, i've never done it, and probably never will (a version upgrade), i'd do a fresh install with the new version, mainly for psychological reasons, lol... although i'm sure there are also technical benefits to doing it the clean install way...

of course before doing the clean install i'd backup not only my documents but also certain configuration files (apache, squid, iptables, samba, dhcpd, etc...) so that i wouldn't have to re-configure that stuff again...