I am very new to Linux. I went with SuSE 9.1 because it came free with a recommended book.

I have everything working fine and I am enjoying it, but for the life of me I cannot get my soundcard configured / working.

YaST identifies the card but fails to install it automatically (it complains about the drivers).

I saw on another thread that someone recommended using the Alsa drivers, however the installation notes seem aimed at an experienced user.

Can anyone walk me through this installation?

Thanks,

R

Hi,

I am also a new person to Linux. Im 2 days into the Linux scene and are having a blast! I have no idea about computer programing and know nothing about Linux apart from what im reading and writing down in my notebook

My first Linux issues was yesterday with my sound card too. I was using Ubuntu at the time (trying out different Linux dists. and I really like Ubuntu and Mepix so far). To fix my problem i had to:

At the terminal, type in alsamixer.

This should bring up a volume control screen with sliders and small boxes with the letters MM inside.

Now, my problem was that my sound card was in Digital mode. All i did was use the Right Arrow key and scrolled to where it said Analoge. I raised that slider bar to full. Where the small box above the box <audigy A> is with the MM letters inside, i hit M. What this did was turn on my sound card and everything worked fine. That box with the MM in sound be highlighted Green when its activated.

Hope my noob-ness can help you

Thanks.

Thanks,

when I type alsamixer I get :

alsamixer: function snd_ctl_open failed for default: No such device

Thanks for trying anyway.

R.

I used SuSE 9.1 with an SB Live Value card and ALSA with no issues at all. The main thing I had to do was turn all the volume levels up in YaST and it worked fine. Which SB model do you have? You should be able to load the emu10k1 driver for a generic SB card and everything work fine.

According to Windoze XP it's a Creative SB Live! series (WDM).

To be honest - it came in the machine and I have not had to look before now. The machine is a Dell 4550 PIII. It may be that it's a specific Dell job, but before you all say "oh yeah, it's a Dell special, go and buy something else." this is a pretty standard, and popular machine, I am sure someone else must have hit this wall and found a way through.

Inevitably it is going to be me missing something "obvious". Eg. how do I know if sound is enabled in the Kernel ? - I saw that in some other posts.

If I remember correctly there was a bug in the kernel, that was released with SuSE 9.1, for the SB Live sound cards. You would have to do a search of the forums, I remember two solutions to the problem. Fix a line in the kernel source and recompile the kernel or run YOU(YaST Online Update) which will fix the problem for you with a patch. It would be easier for you to use the later method since you are new to Linux. If you search the forums you can find the thread I'm thinking of, if I get some time later I might search for it. Hope this helped a little.

I've ran the Yast Online Update - downloaded a shedload of patches - but after all that still no joy. I tried removing and adding the card again (in YaST) - but nada.

The recompiling the Kernel sounds tough - is it? I wouldn't really know where to begin.

Thanks for trying anyway. Looks like I'll just have to stick with Windoze if I want sound.

Is it worth me downloading and trying SuSE 9.3?

What are the chances of this supporting my soundcard? If it is just the same as 9.1 then I won't bother.

Any Thoughts?

I had the same Dell machine (still have the soundcard in use but new mobo etc.) and i had exactly the same problem. I whittled away the solutions until it turned out that it's an OEM card made by Dell (not creative) as such, the standard drivers (emu10k1) would not work properly, my first solution was getting onboard sound on a new mobo i was getting anyway.

However by chance my last reinstall of FC3 (a month ago i think) i was just messing about and it auto detected my sound card, which was a great suprise...)

I realise this doesn;t help exactly, but your problem sounds similar and maybe you could try a different distro if you're not too attached to SUSE, or atleast use this info to refine your questions and get a solution

Just stumbled across this :

http://www.togaware.com/linux/surviv...l_SBLive.shtml

Not looked in great detail yet, but it seems I need 2.6.11 or later - I think my 9.1 has 2.6.5 - but I may be wrong. 9.3 has 2.6.11.4-20a (elaborate, I know - but that's from their site) so this may rock the casbah - as it were.

It still doesn't work - even under 9.3 - complete reinstall.

I am going to have to swipe another sound card from work aren't I?

Aha - before I went "a - robbin" from work I decided I'd give alsaconf one last try:
opened up Konsole
typed su to go into the root user, entered password
and then typed alsaconf
it detected the card and played me a nice fanfare!

all working now.