Today I upgraded to kernel 2.6.15 and downloaded the latest udev (080) from kernel.org and built it with the official SlackBuild script for 064 (from slackware.com)

It compiled and installed fine, but now I have no audio/mixer/sound devices in /dev anymore, and thus no sound.

Alsaconfig works fine and recognizes my card as ali5451, but inbetween a couple of clear-screens, when it's about to set the new parameters, alsaconf says:

Loading ALSA mixer settings: /usr/sbin/alsactl restore
/usr/sbin/alsactl: load_state:1236: No soundcards found...

However, lspci prints it correctly as Multimedia audio controller: ALi Corporation M5451 PCI AC-Link Controller Audio Device (rev 02)

lsmod gives
Module Size Used by
radeon 108320 1
drm 66324 2 radeon
snd_pcm_oss 48736 0
snd_mixer_oss 17216 1 snd_pcm_oss
wlan_tkip 10752 2
ati_agp 6732 1
snd_ali5451 21132 0
snd_ac97_codec 93600 1 snd_ali5451
snd_ac97_bus 1984 1 snd_ac97_codec
snd_pcm 80008 3 snd_pcm_oss,snd_ali5451,snd_ac97_codec
snd_timer 20676 1 snd_pcm
snd 45348 6 snd_pcm_oss,snd_mixer_oss,snd_ali5451,snd_ac97_codec,snd_pcm,snd_timer
snd_page_alloc 8840 1 snd_pcm
ath_pci 71196 0
ath_rate_sample 14728 1 ath_pci
wlan 132060 4 wlan_tkip,ath_pci,ath_rate_sample
ath_hal 146704 3 ath_pci,ath_rate_sample
tg3 101380 0
pcmcia 31508 4
yenta_socket 25420 4
rsrc_nonstatic 10432 1 yenta_socket
pcmcia_core 36304 3 pcmcia,yenta_socket,rsrc_nonstatic
agpgart 29704 2 drm,ati_agp


I'd really like to get my /dev/audio devices back, so any insight would be greatly appreciated!

-Y1

Recompile your kernel with the sound drivers as modules

They are already compiled as <M>odules - have done that since 2.6.12 ... Which is why this doesn't make much sense to me...

As you can see from my initial post with lsmod output, the modules are even loaded.

-Y1

Here's my lsmod: The major difference I can see (Besides the video) is i2c. It is in charge of communication between various chunks 'o hardware. Maybe???

Hi again, and thanks for your answers!

I loaded the i2c modules, but it made no difference.

What puzzles me is that this worked perfectly before going to 2.6.15 and upgrading to udev 0.8.0 - could it be a udev problem?

Furthermore, the modules are loaded (ref my lsmod output), but still the alsactl claims "No soundcards found" - how could this be?

I can't find anything in the changelog indicating that this should break, but then again, I'm no expert...

-Y1

I just went to 2.6.15 myself, but did not change udev. Sound is fine on mine. Don't know what to tell you

You managed to go to 2.6.15 and stay with Slackware's udev064 ? I read that was recommended against.. Anyway - when going latest udev from kernel.org I finally got my Synaptics touchpad to work correctly, so I'm reluctant to going back...

Thanks for your help!

Does anyone else have any ideas?

-Y1

cwwilson721:
Udev is broken for certain things with 2.6.15, you need to upgrade to udev 071 as a minimum.

Yalla-One:
I'd reccommend you switch to udev 072 for 2.6.15 - I had trouble with the newer udev's (they didn't seem to come out right with the Slackware udev SlackBuild), and 071 broke the custom rules I had in /dev/input for my input devices.

My udev is working fine. Detects my sound, usb devices, Alps Touchpad....

I have no reason to upgrade it. Sometimes the newest and greastest isn't so great

Thanks cathectic!

I finally narrowed the problem down to udev myself.

I'm running udev080, and even though /etc/rc.d/rc.udev is mode 755 and supposedly runs at startup, it doesn't properly create the /dev/sound/* device files - so when I re-run the /etc/rc.d/rc.udev afer boot, everything works fine. However, if I leave it as is, there are no sound devices in /dev, and thus no sound.

I do not know if this is due to me using a SlackBuild script written for udev064 on udev080, or if it's due to changes in udev (or another bug), but knowing that running /etc/rc.d/rc.udev manually again after boot fixes the problem, I suspect this is either due to a race condition or due to a script error.

Has anyone else had similar experience with the recent udevs?

-Y1

I'd suggest you look here
http://piterpunk.info02.com.br/extra/
May be this fixes your problems.
It must be said udev dosen't work smoothly on Slack.
I recently changed to kernel 2.6.15 and udev 0.79 ,no longer hotplug helper.... It seems everything is working fine on my system.
At least it boots very fast
Ciao

I have a udev rule to ensure that there is always a symlink to my touchpad from /dev/input/touchpad - 2.6.15 breaks this with udev because of changes to the /sys input class.

Yes, I did (besides problems cropping up when building the package). Hence I downgraded to 072 which played nice with the sound and my custom input device rules. If you want to move to one of the really new udev's, I suspect they need much more fiddling to get them to play nice - you can see from the ChangeLog's the difficulty even Pat has in getting udev to play nice on Slackware at the best of times.

The problem turned out to be with udev so downgrading to udev 064 from core Slackware solved the problem, except that breaks my synaptics mouse which is no big deal.

Then tried PiterPunk's packages for the new udev and associated rc.x scripts, but unfortunately that broke the system completely by refusing to mount root rw, and keeping it read-only. Will investigate when I have more time...

So for now, the problem is solved by keeping with the default Slackware udev version...

-Y1 (wishing for a stable, consistent udev release )