Fedora Core 2 doesnot detect Realtex AC'97 sound card/codecs
 

I installed Fedora Core 2 yesterday and was surprised to find that the onboard sound card was not detected by the OS. Windows detects this as Realtek AC'97 cound codecs.

I even used the ALSA 1.04 file but could not find any entry in my modules.conf file to edit. WHat am I doing wrong, has any one else faced similar problems?

The onboard audio card is standard on all Gigabyte GA-8KNXP motherboads.

Mustapha

Are you sure that the soundcard was not detected? Are you relying on boot messages to tell you this? Fedora uses a 2.6 series kernel, right? ALSA is integrated into these kernels (OSS is deprecated/obsolete, depending on kernel revision), and because it is (and no longer loaded as a separate external module), I have noticed that I first get a "soundcard not detected" message early in the boot process, and then ALSA and drivers load normally near the end.

Are you getting mixer errors indicating that no sound card device exists? Or do you just not hear any sound? If the latter, you might want to install any alsa-lib and alsa-utils package available for Fedora 2-- the kernel just contains the drivers, not alsamixer or alsaconf, and you need at least alsamixer to unmute the sound channels that are probably still muted by default, and of course you need alsactl to store and restore the new settings on boot.

You might also want to check that any sound-producing apps or services are using ALSA rather than Auto-detect or OSS for output (as I have never found Auto-detect to work properly, and OSS emulation may or may not be enabled in the kernel).

If the sound card really is not found, you'd have to install the kernel-source for your currently-running kernel (if not already installed), and do a make menuconfig to check and see if the module for your sound card was enabled and built in the default kernel. If not, then you'd need to enable it and recompile the kernel and its modules in order for the kernel to load the module at boot.

Hope this helps.
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Thanks a million MOTUB, I did get the alsamixer and was able to hear sounds that come with the OS alarms and stuff. My XMMS however is not able to play MP3 files even though I have the xmms-mp3 updated. I have XMMS v 1.2.10.2.

Where do I get this alsactl for Fedora 2? and how do I get the MP3's to work.

Mustapha

alsactl is part of the alsa-utils package, you should be able to find it on the usual repositories.

When you say that XMMS is not able to play MP3s, what happens? Do the files seem to play but you don't hear anything (raise XMMS volume)? Does XMMS give an error saying that you're using the wrong output plugin (right-click the XMMS window, Options=>Preferences=>change output plugin to ALSA or the sound server of your DE)? While you're in Options=Preferences, check that the MP3 input plugin, when selected, has the "enable plugin" box checked.

That's all the common problems; can't do better without knowing the specific error. Hope it helps.

XMMS gives a screen that due to some copyright agreement, XMMS wont play MP3 files anymore.

You have to install the mp3 plugin for XMMS. Fedora, like RedHat from which it spawned, disables or does not install codecs to play file formats of "questionable legal status", which in this case means MP3s and encoded DVDs (RH and Fedora don't include libdcss, either).

It's called xmms-mp3, afaict. You should be able to find it using yum or apt, or by searching freshrpms.net.