Red Hat 9 - new user
Trying to record from mic and line-in, using kmix and krec.
Getting no sound, but am able to play sound from a wave sound file.

How can I troubleshoot this issue?
How can I find out if the microphone is set as the input device? From Kmix, it is set, but Krec does not seem to record any sound. Pressing the rec button in Krec causes the button to gray out as if it is recording, but then after pressing stop, and trying to play the sound, the play button is not active. How can I troubleshoot this step-by-step?

I also tried to use artsControl, and was able to see the wav sound file (not the rec sound file) play in the equalizer, but did not find how artsControl works with kmix or krec, or if one has precedence over the other. I'd prefer not to use artsControl unless I need to.

Please help.

the best tool i know of for seeing and setting alsa mixer settings is
"amixer"
the alsa command line tool
you see all the settings with just the command amixer
for me to set Mic capture would be (capture is alsa record)
amixer set Mic 15 cap
and i might need
amixer set Capture 10 cap
i don't remember if you need Cature or not with the Mic

it helps to have a better mixer than kmix
i like qamix from here
http://alsamodular.sourceforge.net/
but it only comes with a few card settups (it has a great settup for sb live and a few others)
otherwise it's build setup on your own kind of thing which is hard

beyond that i don't know -- never user krec
i say turn off artsd and go straight through alsa with
arecord -d 10 -f cd -t wav foo.wav
to try recording a 10 second wav file
then
aplay foo.wav
to see if it worked

once you get that going branch out to other tools

Thanks.

I had tried to get amixer to work previously and have a post asking for help. An error came up when I tried to run it after installing it:
mixer attache default error : no such file or directory.

I have already ran the snddevices script that is supposed to configure amixer, though I did not make any changes to the default script.

Any suggestions? Does amixer need to work first, before krec or kmix will be operational?

OK RedHat9 is very old and i wasn't paying attention
must be old OSS driver so everything i said is wrong
you havn't said what type of sound card
it's been so long i just don't remember how to record using OSS drivers
all sound drivers are different so i think give us sound card specs and driver module name
and show lsmod output

ever think about using a more modern version of Linux ?

Thanks.

I dont care what sound driver I use, as long as it works well and gives enough sound quality. As for the version, RH9 is not that old, is it? It is much newer than say Windows 2000, and many still use Windows 2000. I just recently upgraded to RH9, actually. Sorry. Also, all that I could do in Windows 2000 right after installation, is taking a long time with RH9 Linux. I did not know that Linux was so complex. I just want to do what I was able to do with sound in Windows 2000!

ALSA is fine with me, if it will work!

Module Size Used by Not tainted
snd 51908 0 (autoclean)
snd-page-alloc 7912 0 (autoclean) [snd]
via82cxxx_audio 24440 1 (autoclean)
uart401 8388 0 (autoclean) [via82cxxx_audio]
ac97_codec 13640 0 (autoclean) [via82cxxx_audio]
sound 74228 0 (autoclean) [via82cxxx_audio uart401]
soundcore 6404 4 (autoclean) [snd via82cxxx_audio sound]
ibmcam 54720 0
usbvideo 27568 0 [ibmcam]
videodev 8288 1 [usbvideo]
usbcore 78784 1 [ibmcam usbvideo hid usb-uhci usb-ohci]

From insmod snd-via82xx:
Using /lib/modules/2.4.20-8/kernel/sound/pci/snd-via82xx.o
/lib/modules/2.4.20-8/kernel/sound/pci/snd-via82xx.o: unresolved symbol snd_pcm_period_elapsed_Ra37852c0
/lib/modules/2.4.20-8/kernel/sound/pci/snd-via82xx.o: unresolved symbol snd_ac97_get_short_name
/lib/modules/2.4.20-8/kernel/sound/pci/snd-via82xx.o: unresolved symbol snd_ac97_set_rate
/lib/modules/2.4.20-8/kernel/sound/pci/snd-via82xx.o: unresolved symbol snd_ac97_tune_hardware
/lib/modules/2.4.20-8/kernel/sound/pci/snd-via82xx.o: unresolved symbol snd_pcm_format_physical_width_Ra8edfa41
/lib/modules/2.4.20-8/kernel/sound/pci/snd-via82xx.o: unresolved symbol snd_pcm_lib_malloc_pages_Re09ac64c
/lib/modules/2.4.20-8/kernel/sound/pci/snd-via82xx.o: unresolved symbol gameport_unregister_port_R70daab68

From alsaconf:
Starting sound driver: snd-via82xx /lib/modules/2.4.20-8/kernel/sound/pci/snd-via82xx.o: init_module: No such device
Hint: insmod errors can be caused by incorrect module parameters, including invalid IO or IRQ parameters.
You may find more information in syslog or the output from dmesg
/lib/modules/2.4.20-8/kernel/sound/pci/snd-via82xx.o: insmod /lib/modules/2.4.20-8/kernel/sound/pci/snd-via82xx.o failed
/lib/modules/2.4.20-8/kernel/sound/pci/snd-via82xx.o: insmod snd-via82xx failed
done

Does this help? The sound card was found from alsaconf. Alsaconf ran and added the device files and modified /etc/modules.conf. I get an error when trying to add the sound module. Is there another module that I should load?