[PlanetCCRMA] Lost sound on FC3
Fernando Lopez-Lezcano
nando@ccrma.Stanford.EDU
Wed Feb 23 16:11:01 2005
On Wed, 2005-02-23 at 13:17, Ron Pepper wrote:
> I'm new to Linux and have a dell P4 desktop machine which is set up
> to dual boot linux and xp. The sound card is a built in Soundblaster
> Live! and isn't recognized properly by FC3 on install. After checking
> the forums, I found that this is a known issue with Dell Dimension
> 4550. Linux sees the soundcard chip as emu10k1, but it is actually
> somewhat different. The ALSA site shows my chip to be emu10k1x and
> subsequent checks confirmed this.
>
> So I followed the directions on the ALSA site to configure and
> install the new module. Since I didn't really know what I was doing,
> I just followed what was written and asked for help from the ALSA
> list when I got stuck. After much struggle, I finally got the sound
> to work. System sounds worked and ogg files I downloaded to the hd
> worked. I could play them from sites as streaming audio as well. I
> couldn't get Gnome player to play inserted CD's, however. I would get
> a "disk error" message from the player. I thought this might be a
> permissions issue as I got error messages when I tried from the ALSA
> site:
>
> Permissions were never set properly, according to ALSA:
> The snddevices script sets the permissions for the devices it creates
> to root. You should
> "chmod a+rw /dev/dsp /dev/mixer /dev/sequencer /dev/midi"
>
> When I tried this, I got:
> >[root@localhost alsa-driver-1.0.8]# chmod a+rw /dev/dsp /dev/mixer
> >/dev/sequencer /dev/midi
> >chmod: cannot access `/dev/dsp': No such file or directory
> >chmod: cannot access `/dev/mixer': No such file or directory
> >chmod: cannot access `/dev/sequencer': No such file or directory
> >chmod: cannot access `/dev/midi': No such file or directory
Those are the oss devices, which were apparently not created. Unless you
use programs that only understand OSS (instead of ALSA) you don't need
this.
> >From the list, I was advised:
>
> "If you make sure your system has a group named "audio", then the
> snddevices script will create devices with a group attribute of
> "audio"
>
> In /dev/snd for example:
> crw-rw---- 1 root audio 116, 24 Feb 20 11:40 pcmC0D0c
>
> Then all you have to do is ensure that your users are members of a
> group named "audio".
>
> on my system:
> cat /etc/group | grep audio"
This does not really apply to Fedora Core as it does not have a group
"audio" nor uses one if present. Devices should be owned by the login
name that is currently logged into X.
> Unfortunately, I didn't really understand what I was doing and now
> have lost all sound! I'm a newbie and don't know how to troubleshoot
> this. Help would be appreciated!
>
> Thanks, Ron
>
>
> The result of lsmod:
> [rp@rp ~]$ /sbin/lsmod
> Module Size Used by
> vfat 12609 1
> fat 39905 1 vfat
> parport_pc 26629 1
> lp 12077 0
> parport 37001 2 parport_pc,lp
> autofs4 23493 0
> sunrpc 156325 1
> dm_mod 55637 0
> video 15813 0
> button 6609 0
> battery 9285 0
> ac 4805 0
> md5 4033 1
> ipv6 231681 8
> joydev 9217 0
> uhci_hcd 31449 0
> ehci_hcd 35273 0
> hw_random 5845 0
> i2c_i801 8141 0
> i2c_core 20801 1 i2c_i801
> emu10k1_gp 3649 0
> gameport 4929 1 emu10k1_gp
> snd_emu10k1x 21668 2
> snd_rawmidi 26400 1 snd_emu10k1x
> snd_seq_device 9100 1 snd_rawmidi
> snd_ac97_codec 67064 1 snd_emu10k1x
> snd_pcm_oss 48544 0
> snd_mixer_oss 17920 2 snd_pcm_oss
> snd_pcm 90888 3
> snd_emu10k1x,snd_ac97_codec,snd_pcm_oss
> snd_timer 29572 1 snd_pcm
> snd 54244 10
> snd_emu10k1x,snd_rawmidi,snd_seq_device,snd_ac9
> 7_codec,snd_pcm_oss,snd_mixer_oss,snd_pcm,snd_timer
> soundcore 10017 2 snd
> snd_page_alloc 9988 2 snd_emu10k1x,snd_pcm
> e100 39873 0
> mii 4673 1 e100
> floppy 57841 0
> ext3 116297 2
> jbd 69977 1 ext3
>
> [rp@rp ~]$ cat /etc/modprobe.conf
> alias eth0 e100
> alias snd-card-0 snd-emu10k1x
> options snd-card-0 index=0
> install snd-emu10k1x /sbin/modprobe --ignore-install snd-emu10k1x &&
> /usr/sbin/a lsactl restore >/dev/null 2>&1 || :
> remove snd-emu10k1x { /usr/sbin/alsactl store >/dev/null 2>&1 || : ;
> }; /sbin/mo dprobe -r --ignore-remove snd-emu10k1x
> alias usb-controller ehci-hcd
> alias usb-controller1 uhci-hcd
Well...... this looks fine. Sound should work :-)
Did you:
- check if you see the alsa devices (you should see them)
do "cat /proc/asound/devices"
- check that the alsa devices have the right permissions
do "ls -l /dev/snd/*
- run alsamixer or any other alsa based mixer and both unmute the
channels you are interested in and raise the levels
- test sound playback with an alsa program, like aplay
-- Fernando