Sound: "No such device" with cs4614 on Debian. It worked with RedHat 9
 

I have a Cirrus Logic CS4614 sound card and I am running Debian Sarge.

However Xine and AudaCity do play sound on this card, I can't get the sound card to work with GnomeMeeting and ALSA.

At the startup of KDE I get an error message:

Informational - artsmessage
Sound server informational message:
Error while initializing the sound driver:
device: default can't be opened for playback (No such device)
The sound server will continue, using the null output device.

Because Xine and AudaCity work the card is OK and recognized by Debian. Only ALSA seems to have problems with the detection of the card and so has GnomeMeeting.

Soundcardconfig detects the sound card and writes the new config file. Even after a reboot ALSA does not work.

Modinfo soundcore gives:
filename: /lib/modules/2.4.27/kernel/drivers/sound/soundcore.o
description: "Core sound module"
author: "Alan Cox"
license: "GPL"

With google and other websites I could not find any solution......

How can I use GnomeMeeting with Debian?

NB. My previous RedHat installation with this sound card did work perfect with GnomeMeeting, so it must be a Debian problem.

Because of my preference for Debian, I do not want to switch back to RedHad.

That doesn't make much sense. You say ALSA doesn't work, but when you try to start up aRts it says the sound device doesn't exist? That's referring to /dev/dsp which is the OSS way of working (probably OSS emulation by ALSA).

When you say ALSA, do you actually mean aRts?

You say that sound works OK in xine. OK then, look in the xine config and tell us what sound driver it is using.

(It's going to be set to "auto" I just know it)!

It seems to be aRts because that is running when I look with TOP and not ALSA. How can I change things so that ALSA starts and not aRts?

The debian I use is coming from Knoppix.

I have no idea where I can find the conf file for Xine? Have any idea of a location.

Thanks!

I have the same soundcard, I tried compiling alsa support for it in the kernel and as module but it still didn't work. I got alsa working with it by compiling without alsa and running "alsaconf" utility. Don't know if debian has this by default (I work on slack 10) but you can download it somewhere (sorry, don't know where...) this utility told me I have a 'cirrus logic CS4614' and installed it perfectly!

greetz,
.-=~ iluvatar ~=-.

ALSA is started. ALSA is the soundcard driver: if you have sound at all, ALSA is working.

aRts is something different: a sound server. It allows many applications to output sound simultaneously. If, when you attempt to start aRts, it tells you that the device doesn't exist, this tells me it is trying to open /dev/dsp. This is the old OSS method of working, and the fact that /dev/dsp doesn't exist tells me that you have ALSA compiled with the OSS emulation turned off.

Your solution is to go into the aRts configuration (look in the KDE configuration for "sound system") and tell it to use the ALSA output api instead of the open sound system (OSS).

@iluvatar:
Thanks for the tip. Maybe I will recompile the kernel if other solutions will not work. Grrr.

@vasudevadas:
When I use the Debian KDE configuration module / Sound system, it gives after selecting ALSA and Apply the same message as in my first post in a pop-up window.

I installed the alsa-oss-lib but after that Xine and all other multimedia applications didn't work anymore. So I apt-get removed it and Xine worked fine again.

GnomeMeeting seems to be the only that has a "problem" with the (on-board)-soundcard.

Just now, I have booted with Knoppix 3.6. Even this Knoppix Live-CD had the same error with GnomeMeeting as I have with my HD install of Knoppix. (After the HD install I did "apt-get update", "apt-get upgrade" and "apt-get distr-upgrade".

With RedHat 9 GnomeMeeting (and Xine etc) did work fine without any problems.

I like Debian because of its philosofy and want to dig deep into Debian.....

That's damn peculiar. If you do decide to compile your own kernel, be sure to compile ALSA and the ALSA-OSS compatibility modules (that is, "Advanced Linux Sound Architecture, OSS Mixer API and OSS PCM (digital audio) API" all found under Device Drivers->Sound->Advanced Linux Sound Architecture.

I tried again several options from different posts. I still could not get GneomeMeeting to work with Debian (Knoppix install was the first step).