Sound Fails on Slackware14.0 Installation using LVM
 

Hi,

I recently installed Slackware-14.0 using logical-volume partitions (LVM) on my hard-disk. It seems to work except for sound. After KDE starts an error bubble appears with the message:

========================================================
Removed Sound Devices

KDE detected that one or more internal devices were removed.

Do you want KDE to permanently forget about these devices?

This is the list of devices KDE thinks can be removed:
Capture: VIA 8237, VIA 8237 (Default Audio Device)
Output: VIA 8237, VIA 8237 (Default Audio Device)

Yes. No. Manage Devices.
========================================================

I am unable to make any sound at all from the speaker with tests or any other way.

To check that hardware is basically OK, I installed Slackware-14.0 again on a separate traditional (non-LVM) partition and setup a dual boot. When I boot from the non-LVM partition, sound works fine with no error messages from KDE.

Both boot methods use the kernel: vmlinuz-huge-smp-3.2.29-smp

The LVM boot uses an initrd during boot however, and this may be the cause of the problem. I created the initrd with the command:

mkinitrd -c -k 3.2.29-smp -m ext4 -L -o /mnt_wfk/boot/initrd.gz \
-f ext4 -r /dev/mapper/vg_wfk1-S14_ROOT

Then I used grub2 to write the MBR that handles my dual boots. The grub2 stanza for the LVM boot is:

menuentry "Slack14.0, with Linux 3.2.29-smp using LVM" {
insmod lvm
insmod ext2

linux /boot/vmlinuz-huge-smp-3.2.29-smp root=
/dev/mapper/vg_wfk1-S14_ROOT ro
initrd /boot/initrd.gz
}

Can anyone suggest a way to track down what is wrong?

Thanks very much!

I think the first thing to do is make sure the correct sound driver is loaded for your card when failing.

Do you know what the correct driver is? If not, run the command 'lspci' and post the line for the audio hardware. If you know what the driver is, run 'lsmod' and confirm the driver is loaded, when failing.

Have you run a mixer, and made sure you are not muted, and the volume is turned up? alsamixer should show you this.

camorri,

Thanks for your reply.

When I run alsamixer, I see the following info in the header lines:

alsamixer
Card: VIA 8237 F1: Help
Chip: Realtek ALC655 rev 0 F2: System information
View: F3:[Playback] F4: Capture F5: All F6: Select sound card
Item: Master [dB gain: -10.50, -10.50] Esc: Exit

The levels shown by alsamixer are very similar to those shown when I boot my non-LVM partition and the sound works fine with non-LVM. So I think the mixer level settings are OK.

When I run "lsmod | grep -i snd" using LVM and non-LVM boots, the only difference I see is:

snd_via82xx 17426 0 (for LVM boot)
snd_via82xx 17426 2 (for non-LVM boot)

I believe that means that there aren't any clients for snd_via82xx. I hope that is a clue.

I ran lscpi using both boots and I got identical results. I list the result below.

Thanks for your help!

--------------------------------------------------------
# lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. K8M800 Host Bridge
00:00.1 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. K8M800 Host Bridge
00:00.2 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. K8M800 Host Bridge
00:00.3 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. K8M800 Host Bridge
00:00.4 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. K8M800 Host Bridge
00:00.7 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. K8M800 Host Bridge
00:01.0 PCI bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8237/8251 PCI bridge [K8M890/K8T800/K8T890 South]
00:09.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4306 802.11b/g Wireless LAN Controller (rev 03)
00:0f.0 IDE interface: VIA Technologies, Inc. VIA VT6420 SATA RAID Controller (rev 80)
00:0f.1 IDE interface: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C586A/B/VT82C686/A/B/VT823x/A/C PIPC Bus Master IDE (rev 06)
00:10.0 USB controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 81)
00:10.1 USB controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 81)
00:10.2 USB controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 81)
00:10.3 USB controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 81)
00:10.4 USB controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. USB 2.0 (rev 86)
00:11.0 ISA bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8237 ISA bridge [KT600/K8T800/K8T890 South]
00:11.5 Multimedia audio controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8233/A/8235/8237 AC97 Audio Controller (rev 60)
00:13.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8139/8139C/8139C+ (rev 10)
00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] HyperTransport Technology Configuration
00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Address Map
00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] DRAM Controller
00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Miscellaneous Control
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV44A [GeForce 6200] (rev a1)

That answers my questions.

I looked at alsa pages for the driver. -->http://www.alsa-project.org/main/ind...Module-via82xx

It seems to indicate you should have this list of modules loaded.

Other than check the list of modules, not sure what else to suggest. I do not have any idea why LVM would be affecting this card.

Hi,

My installation of Slackware_14.0 using LVM is still not quite working.

To recap, I installed Slackware_14.0 on LVM partitions and sound was not working.
Then I installed Slackware_14.0 again, on the same X86 machine using tradition partitions.
Then I arranged for dual booting from either installation. On both I used the slackware installer and answered all questions except those about partitioning the same way.

The strange thing is that sound works fine with my "traditional partition" but but sound doesn't work when booted from the LVM partition though the two installations are as alike as possible.

For both installations I edited the /etc/inittab file so as to start X automatically.
I changed lines in that file to read:

# Default runlevel. (Do not set to 0 or 6)
#id:3:initdefault:
id:4:initdefault:

Now I have noticed that when I change this back to starting runlevel 3, and then using
startx after the boot, sound does work properly even from my LVM partition!!!

Can anyone suggest what needs to be done to make sound work when booting direct to runlevel 4?

Thanks.

Solution
 

This issue has been solved.

It turned not to be LVM related.
The problem was that I had set /etc/inittab so as to automatically start X,
and for some reason that stopped sound from working. If I exited X, and
returned to console, then ran startx, the sound would work.o

I asked about this on another thread, and got the advice to add the "audio" group
to my user name using:


usermod -G audio -a <your_user_account>

This solved the problem, and now I boot at run level4 and the sound works!