[linux-audio-user] sound on debian 2.4.26

[tim hall]

Last Wednesday 04 August 2004 16:08, Laura Conrad was like:
> Thanks to everyone who wrote with helpful advice.
>
> I have tried most of the suggestions, and am still getting no sound.

Oh dear :(

>     I tried booting back to 2.4.l8, and it doesn't play sound now
>     either.  I tried removing the alsa apps and going back to oss,
>     which really used to work.  It doesn't now, but it isn't clear
>     that I really removed all the alsa stuff, although the loaded
>     modules look like the oss ones to me.  This version gives me an
>     error message when I try to play a MIDI file:
>
>           $ timidity score.midi
>             Couldn't open output device

ALSA drivers are all named snd-[something] - in your case snd-sb[something] 
look in /lib/modules/2.4.25-1-multimedia-686/alsa/ or any of the others, 
there's a directory for each kernel.

> I have some questions, none of which may be relevant, but I really
> need sound to work:
>
>      I believe that via82cxxx_audio is the module for the soundcard
>      that's on the motherboard, which I don't want to use.  Why does
>      it keep loading it, even though I have told the bios to turn it
>      off?  And how do I make it stop loading this module?
>
>      /proc/interrupts reports that both the SB-Live and the onboard
>      sound are sharing interrupt 9.  Is this likely to be causing
>      problems?

This suggests that you haven't actually disabled the onboard via82cxxxx - It 
shouldn't be a problem if it's really not being used, but then it shouldn't 
show up in /proc/interrupts either in that case.

>      Does anyone have any idea what changed between kernel 2.4.18,
>      when OSS sound worked, and 2.4.25 when it doesn't?

I think the OSS modules were removed from the multimedia version of the kernel 
because they caused too much configuration confusion. They should be there in 
the other sets of modules.

I don't know about 2.6.x kernels.

> Is there anything else I should be trying?

Checklist:
/etc/group - check you are in 'audio' group (may be 'sound' instead)
/dev/dsp* /dev/mixer* /dev/cdrom* etc. - check these are set to the correct 
group also. [5]
/etc/alsa/modutils/1.0 - check this has the right settings for the soundcard 
you want to use [4].
~/.asoundrc - details at [4] again.
Make sure the volume is turned up on your mixer and theoretically you should 
have sound. You may need to log out & back in again before these settings 
take effect.

HTH

tim hall

Useful links:
[0] http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/reference/reference.en.html
[1] http://www.agnula.org/download/demudi/1.2.0-FAQ
[2] http://www.agnula.org/documentation/FAQ/
[3] http://d-i.alioth.debian.org/manual/en.i386/index.html
[4] http://www.alsa-project.org/alsa-doc/
[5] http://kreiger.linuxgods.com/kiki/?linux+sound-permissions
[6] http://www.togaware.com/linux/survivor/index.shtml