Ubuntu 9.04 No Sound

keirvt · 09-18-2009, 07:00 PM

This is an extra hint for people experience loss of sound after an Ubuntu upgrade

There is an apparent conflict between Alsa and Pulse Audio. A number of pages will advise disabling Pulse Audio and only enabling Alsa and this worked for me.

Ubuntu seems to be pushing Pulse Audio which would be okay if it worked. Ubuntu is in my experience one of the best flavours but many some have to go to considerable trouble to get rid of Pulse

A handy little script called fixsound is

#!/bin/sh
# echo need to be root for this to work
killall pulseaudio
alsa force-reload

be sure to chmod 755 to be executable

If there is still no sound try running the alsa mixer GUI and make sure that the external amplifier is off.

If you don't like to sudo to root each time this C program may help.
Compile this code with C compiler

#include <stdio.h>
main( argc, argv, envp)
int argc;
char *argv, *envp;
{
setuid(0);
execv("/home/mydirectory/fixsound",argv);
}

chown the code setuid root so the permissions look like
-rwsr-xr-x and owned by root

and put a command to execute this program in your .profile in your home directory

momist · 09-19-2009, 04:02 AM

Hi everyone,

The fix suggested won't work for me. Please try to help if you can. After a recent update to my Jaunty system, I've lost all sound, including the drum roll at boot time.

I'm using an AMD 1600XP 32 bit processor on a much upgraded homebrew machine which has had the current hardware without sound troubles for a few years now. The machine can see the on-board C-Media AC'97 'soundcard', as revealed by "hwinfo --sound".

Code:

19: PCI 02.7: 0401 Multimedia audio controller                  
  [Created at pci.314]
  UDI: /org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/pci_1039_7012
  Unique ID: 1sCg.mUMDO85F5bB
  SysFS ID: /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:02.7
  SysFS BusID: 0000:00:02.7
  Hardware Class: sound
  Model: "Silicon Integrated AC'97 Sound Controller"
  Vendor: pci 0x1039 "Silicon Integrated Systems Corp."
  Device: pci 0x7012 "AC'97 Sound Controller"
  SubVendor: pci 0x13f6 "C-Media Electronics Inc"
  SubDevice: pci 0x0300 "ECS K7SOM+ motherboard"
  Revision: 0xa0
  Driver: "Intel ICH"
  Driver Modules: "snd_intel8x0"
  I/O Ports: 0xd800-0xd8ff (rw)
  I/O Ports: 0xd400-0xd43f (rw)
  IRQ: 11 (861840 events)
  Module Alias: "pci:v00001039d00007012sv000013F6sd00000300bc04sc01i00"
  Driver Info #0:
    Driver Status: snd_intel8x0 is active
    Driver Activation Cmd: "modprobe snd_intel8x0"
  Config Status: cfg=new, avail=yes, need=no, active=unknown

and lspci -v

Code:

ian@***:~$ lspci -v
00:02.7 Multimedia audio controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] AC'97 Sound Controller (rev a0)
	Subsystem: C-Media Electronics Inc Device 0300
	Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 64, IRQ 11
	I/O ports at d800 [size=256]
	I/O ports at d400 [size=64]
	Capabilities: <access denied>
	Kernel driver in use: Intel ICH
	Kernel modules: snd-intel8x0

I don't understand every part of these outputs, for instance what is meant by the Config Status line showing "cfg=new, avail=yes, need=no, active=unknown"?

I've read and re-read all the various threads in the Ubuntu forums about lost sound, and discovered all the variations on volume control and pulse-audio settings etc. The problem is that none of this software can see the soundcard, as aplay -l shows:

Code:

aplay: device_list:217: no soundcards found...

I've read extensively about /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf and tried editing this to make sure the correct codec is used, all to no avail.

My only option now seems to be to go back to the "image" of the Intrepid setup I was using until recently, and abandon Jaunty entirely. Before I do that, can anyone suggest something I haven't looked at yet?

Thanks

Ian

momist · 09-20-2009, 11:53 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by momist

The fix suggested won't work for me.
<snip>
aplay -l shows:

Code:

aplay: device_list:217: no soundcards found...

My only option now seems to be to go back to the "image" of the Intrepid setup I was using until recently, and abandon Jaunty entirely. Before I do that, can anyone suggest something I haven't looked at yet?

Thanks

Ian

So, I didn't so that. Instead a complete clean install of Jaunty has cured the problem. Acres of work to re-install all the odd packages I've accumulated over the years, and weed out any that could possibly break the audio (gxmms etc.) and set up the repositories the way I need them, but it has cured the problem.

Ian

Crito · 09-20-2009, 12:41 PM

I had the opposite problem with Kubuntu. Pulseaudio seemed to only be half installed, and every time I tried to use it the system would default back to the ALSA driver after hanging for a second or two. So I opened up Synaptic, installed the Pulseaudio package and about 10 dependencies and now it works perfectly every time.