slackware 14.1 KDE x64

duhh?!?! . . no audio! . . it worked yesterday. audio on other partitions (operating systems) on same computer work.

when i boot to desktop, a little box opens and says:

The audio playback device HDA Intel (ALC889 Analog) does not work. Falling back to default.

anybody have advice?

Is your user a member of the audio group? Did you run `alsactl init' and `alsactl store'? This fixed my audio issues on Slackware.

edit: I guess you should also make sure that /etc/rc.d/rc.alsa is executable

thanks for replies, but i was not able to resolve problem. i tried menu>multimedia>mixer and got:

GStreamer was unable to detect any sound devices. Some sound system specific GStreamer packages may be missing. It may also be a permissions problem.

Greetings
I have had some similar recent nonsense that my paranoia attributes to ever more systemd convenience junk, but wait...I'll resist the urge to rant. It used to be that the best if not the only way to fix hardware issues was from command line. But we should admit that even the most leet admin spends some, if not most time in X these days on his desktop or laptop, even if a console is constantly open.

It is still worthwhile to go through the typical
if nothing more than to see what errors you receive. That said, there is so much on top of the base once in X anymore it is also wise to seek information and testing within it, since I'm guessing you're not all that concerned about sound on runlevel 3.

If you're using some Gnome derivative, I can't help much. I've just never liked it. I love Xfce4 but it does seem to lack some utility of KDE, and especially in this area. In KDE, one can launch the "System Settings" app and scroll to "Multimedia" and open it. In there is Phonon, which has a list of detected cards and it is common that "here today, gone tomorrow" sound is caused by conflicts, lately by HDMI sound aboard video cards.

You can select each detected item from the list and hit the "Test" button to see if you hear anything. I know, not nearly as cool as actual error messages, but it is the bottom line after all.

If you have KDE and do this and see multiple entries, especially for any HDA or HDMI devices you are going to either have to blacklist them or write a very specific "~/.asoundrc" that will implement reasonable sharing of duties.

At this point I should probably shutup and let you find out what's going on and wait to hear back. Hope this helps some.

oops, i forgot to mention, prior to audio failure, i edited /etc/inittab to runlevel 4 so i could auto login. . . (i didn't know there was a connection). . . so i just tried putting it back to 3 and got audio back.

is there any way i can have audio and autologin ?

I'm sure there is but I'm not going to help there anymore than I'd let a friend code drunk :P Is it really all that inconvenient, given what should now be at least a little clue as to the value of defaulting to console (and one of the features that makes Slackware unique and special) to type "startx" or "kdm" ?

I tweeked kdmrc for autologin:

lems already asked this, but you haven't answered yet:

Adam

Rita, you can open a terminal and use the groups command to see what groups you are connected to.

The groups command will give you a list of groups, similar to the following:

If you don't see audio in the list of groups, you can add yourself to that group with the usermod command. Switch to root using su or login as root to issue the usermod command. Assuming your login name is rita, you would enter the following:

Case is important. Make sure that is -G, not -g.

ok, thank you all for being so helpful. i edited /etc/inittab back to runlevel 3 and going to leave it there, since it works. i'll just login manually like everyone else does. have a nice day.

A tip - If you add

to .bash_profile, then X starts automatically after you've entered a username and password on login promt. Eliminates the need to type startx every time.

That is - only on tty1, if you just want to log in, without going into X, you can still do, on tty2 etc.