newbie4ever

the output of "ls -l /dev/sound" is "audio" "dsp" "mixer" "sequencer" "sequencer2" ( and various flags; I can't seem to copy and paste between the console and the webpage) the output of "ls -l /dev/snd" is "ControlC0" through "ControlC7" "pcmC0D0c" "pcmC0D0p" "seq" "timer". /dev/dsp is still empty, and "fuser -v /dev/dsp" still doesn't produce anything (what does "fuser do anyway, list dependencies?) As I have mentioned, ALSA is running and a tree of "snd" modules exist. I do not want to have to re-install.

The good news is, I found the option "PnP OS" in the BIOS and disabled it, and upon running Linux I discovered that I was able to install drivers, and that a number of new "snd" modules showed up in "lsmod". The bad news is that, despite repeatedly trying drivers in HardDrake (especially "snd-intel8x0" the one supposed to work with SiS7012), I still cannot get sound out of Linux in any way except the CD player (which of course bypasses the sound controller and goes straight to the speaker). After one more reboot, ALSA decided to finally say it was "running" under services. Unfortunately, the command "aumix -q" is still not recognized by Bash. I have the feeling that ALSA is still not quite right. Finally, the contents of "/dev/dsp/" exists now but is empty. No results are displayed when I type "/sbin/fuser -v /dev/dsp" implying that it is unused, despite the nice tree of modules that is apparent in lsmod.

something else that struck me as "odd" I should have mentioned earlier. Most of the devices on HardDrake have a "configure module" option that makes sense for the particular device, but the ones on the sound card are bizarre: "joystick_port" and "mpu_port" as well as things like "enable". I have never tried playing with the module configuration for hardware this way, so I probably risk breaking it to set "enable = 1", but the mention of joysticks is a sign that detection went awry.

I don't have a "/proc/asound/" directory or a command "sndconfig" in "/sbin" or wherever it is supposed to be. And there is no "/dev/dsp". So something that should have clicked in ALSA just didn't. Is it bad that the sound card is at PCI slot 2.7 and that the USB ports are on slots 3.1/3.2/3.3? The USB works now, but the sound only works in Windows.

I decided to walk through Hard Drake's troubleshoot one more time, and at the "LSMOD" stage I decided to try something. On previous attempts, I had noticed that module "snd" had no comments, and that "soundcore" was used by "snd". But the module list has never contained mention of "alsa" or of "snd-intel8x0" (possibly because they are included in "snd"?) But I decided that I would try "insmod snd-intel8x0" in the hopes that this was the missing step that HardDrake was supposed to have done. The output included a lot of "unresolved symbol snd_pcm_hw_constraint_list_Rfbf425a" type errors, and would not add snd-intel8x0 to the list. Is this because when module "snd" is loaded, snd-intel8x0 is automatically there?

Finally. I got it to work, and Mandrake properly mounted it upon boot. It turns out that my front USB ports were broken, and only the rear ones work. So there was no "sda4" when the drive was plugged in in the front, but there was when I connected it to the back ports. It was a hardware problem all along. My apologies for the trouble.

I read the startup screen, and the messages "starting us-ohci [OK]" and "mounting us file systems [OK] appeared. Normally this would be a good thing. Unfortunately, the usb drive still doesn't show up on /dev or on /mnt, which is confusing. Browsing /dev with console was somewhat confusing, as there were plenty of familiar devices (/cdrom for example) but a large number of other devices or nodes. I read a bit about chars, blocks, and fifos, but I am still nervous about creating nodes that don't attach to anything. I browsed the directory in Konquerer and somehow it had more description of what things were, for example that hda's were the HD on the IDE port. I found no mention of USB anything, and a lot of still undescribed "MD" objects (operating system memory maps?), "TTY" objects (which somehow I've heard relate to serial ports, but there are 100 which is too many for my USB ports), and other odd ones. They include CUA, FB, FD, PTS, PTY, RAW, RD, SHM, SR, TTS, VC, and VCC (power?!). I don't know if the presence of a node necessarily means that some hardware has been detected. I could try mounting these, but it might break something. There are no objects for "EHCI" or "OHCI" or "HCD", if these meant something. There is a folder for USB but no nodes inside or below. I am tempted to create a node by hand, but unless the OS does it, it may not help anything. As I have mentioned, USB shows up in Harddrake but has no means of affixing a driver to it. It also does not quote the "/dev" or "/proc" folders that relate to this hardware. (but is still very useful for PCI things). Is it a problem that the USB is on locations 3.1, 3.2, and 3.3 multiplexing a PCI slot, it would look wrong for most things but it is serial so it should not need 32-bit data/address lines. In modules.conf, the lines read "probeall usb-interface usb-ohci" and not "probeall usb-interface usb-uhci ehci-hcd". I am tempted to change the line but if the OS does not do it, it might not make a difference. Finally, "/proc" contains a folder for "/usb" which contains "/001/001", "002/002", "003/003", "devices" (empty), and "drivers" (empty). Interesting. I could try adding "usb-ohci" as a line to the empty document "drivers" but I have no idea what to list under "devices". So the primary issue is, I either have no "device" or just can't find it.

could it show up as an "hda"?

there are no "sda#" in the "dev" directory on my computer. The "/proc" directory contains references to usb ports, but no zip drive or sda mentions: "/proc/bus/usb/001/001", ".../002/002", ".../003/003", ".../drivers" , ".../devices".

I could not find a way in Hard Drake to choose drivers for the USB adapter (sis7001/7002) on the PCI bus. The manufacturer SiS did not have drivers for download from operating systems different than Win2000/XP. Of course, LSPCI finds them, but I can't find a way to test them "as they are" (without plugging in the ZIP drive, which has its own "mount utility" that crashes). How do I tell if it's my USB port's fault or the ZIP drive's fault if I have trouble? LSMOD shows "usb-ohci" as "unused". This implies that something is "missing" like a driver. My BIOS only had enable/disable options for USB 1.0/2.0, and by default both are enabled. IOMEGA's program acts like I did not install it right, in fact I can get a help listing with the command "iw" but the main command line "iomegaware -m" is not recognized by bash.

I got a recent computer with a motherboard that supports USB 2.0 and a new USB 750mb zip drive. I tried plugging it into my computer in the usb port, but I don't see it show up where my cd rom, floppy, and windows are mounted. I cannot get it to work in windows 98 either, because it doesn't look like the USB drivers work, even though I installed all the latest software from iomega. I'm not going to install xp on my system, I had a horrid experience with it and thats why I started getting into linux.

In addition to enabling the sis900 itself, have you looked for an option for its Boot Rom in the BIOS? That was what I had to do. The output of "ifconfig eth0" should tell you the IRQ in the bottom left corner, and the boot rom can fix that. But if I misunderstood and you tried that already, try using a static ip and making sure it is different from other machines on your LAN. Then ping the other machines. When you can communicate on the LAN, but if you get stuck on the internet, try different DNS servers related to your ISP (I had the unfortunate experience of having some that did not seem to "like" Linux but worked in windows, but I found another of my ISP's DNSs did work in Linux)

What do you think all of the ALSA errors (ignore the previous PCI post) mean?

I found the pci problem using "lspci" it is my fax modem device. (0:9:0) Fortunately it has zilch to do with my sound.

the boot log was: Starting ALSA 0.9.6 (intel8x0) can't open /root/tmp/asound.state_tmp can't open /root/tmp/asound.state_tmp starting mixer settings alsactl : load state : 1134 : no sound cards found [FAILED] another time it produced alsactl: save_state : 1061: no sound cards found which probably meant that it did find the temp file, but that did not help. I restarted the computer again to take a closer look at the pci traffic messages that always zoom by too fast, and got a glimpse of "no IRQ found for interrupt port A of device 00.09.00 please use pci=biosirq" followed by something like "redundant entry in pci table" Wondering if the sound device is having pci bus conflicts, I checked config again and verified that nothing is in the same location as the sound card (0:2:7). Of couse, ISA is at 0:2:0 and usb is at 0:3:x and I wonder if ISA is bumping into 0:2:7.

I had too much other work for the past few weeks, but I got back to it... I am able to get HardDrake to say it's using the ALSA intel8x0 setting. (not OSS) (by choosing "snd-intel8x0" after choosing "choose any driver"). It claims that it is changing modules.conf, but makes no mention of /dev/dsp/ When I check modules.conf, I see "alias sound-slot-0 snd-intel8x0" and "above snd-intel8x0 snd-pcm-oss". This agrees with james' comment, but seems contrary to the fact that I chose ALSA drivers. HardDrake refuses to create a /dev/dsp folder even though you claim that it should. What other step must I take to create a /dev/dsp folder, and can I download it? Is there a module in Mandrake that I need to reinstall?? Probably because it lacks /dev/dsp, or maybe for other reasons, ALSA will refuse to run. It does produce logs saying it "started [OK]" but the flag in Services says that it is stopped the entire time. On boot, the ALSA message does indicate a failure in starting the task: "Starting ALSA version ...." "can't open /root/temp/asound/sound_files.tmp" (I have to check the exact wording) "can't open /root/temp/asound/sound_files.tmp" "Failed to find sound card, load state 1134" (wording? number is accurate). I will concentrate my efforts on that bizzare message, and try to write it down properly next time.

I am using the intel8x0 driver. Soundcore is in the "lsmod" list. In chkconfig switch "3" is on for ALSA. But "aumix" is not treated as a valid command. Under system configuration, I looked at what Services were running. ALSA was listed as "stopped". I tried to start it, and the log said that it shut it down [OK] and started again [OK]. This is where it gets weird: the tag still says that it is stopped, even though the log says that it started OK. There is no log of a crash. When I click to "stop" it says that it is stopping [OK]. When I click to "start" it says it is starting [OK]. The tag still says it is stopped. Is my ALSA service broken somehow?

Basically, I run the configure tool on the sound card, and it changed modules.conf with the driver I chose, but does not produce a /dev/dsp/ folder. Nor does it add an entry to /sbin/lsmod for sound. I checked the BIOS for on-board PCI options, because this is how I fixed my ethernet adapter earlier. Sadly, the only audio options were "auto" and "off" and it was set to auto. I checked SiS's website about their pesky 7012 on-board sound adapter, and they just recommended to use i810 drivers in linux. That and the 3 other driver options would not work. Do you have any ideas?

Instead of this computer's DNS servers from windows, I tried the other computer's DNS servers, and it worked! This is good. I wonder what was wrong with the DNS servers I originally tried, did they expect windows packets??

These numbers were already there. I don't know if this is a router problem now, or what.

Thank you for suggesting a BIOS fix. When I got back to the problem this weekend, I tried a bunch of tricks with ifconfig and route and drakconnect, and noticed that there was no irq for eth0. So I went into BIOS and found an option for on-board PCI devices, and it wanted to auto-assign PCI irqs but trusting that it was doing this already, I found one option for eth0 "sis900 boot rom enable/disable". I enabled it, returned to boot, and good news... now I can ping the other devices on the LAN, and the route and ifconfig tables look as they should. Unfortunately, I can still only connect to the internet in windows. What's strange is that I can ping the router, and use mozilla to look at the settings on the router like I can from windows or the other computer, and even look at the IP of the WAN side of this router, but if I try to ping or browse the DNS that the router's menu lists (one that I've proven to work on the other computer and in Windows), I don't get anything. Furthermore I can't access yahoo.com or things on the Internet besides the internet side of the router. The router works on both OSes on the other computer, and in windows on this computer, so I guess I can't blame the router. DrakConnect of course says that my internet connection doesn't work. My gateway and DNS are of course set same as the other computer, and same as in windows on the given computer. I checked services and have "internet", "samba" "network", etc. all running. What gives?

I have the aRts mixxer thing, and everytime I log in, I get the no dev/dsp found. I looked at my old mandrake 8.2 system, and I have it there, but when I tried to copy it to a floppy, it wouldn't let me. I look at my directory dev and sure enough no dsp. I tried installing more rpms with the file name dsp, but that doesn't do it either, I installed all the ones that mention something about sound. Is there a place I can download this file so it just works?

I've read a bit, and found a procedure that has been shown on other computers. I've even had success getting a different etherent card to connect to a LAN and through to DSL on the other computer on this network. The driver appeared to install okay. I entered a new local (static) IP and the gateway IP as I did on the other computer, as part of the Network Wizard. It appeared to save the changes. When I open DrakConnect, it knows the hardware device and domain name. The problem is that it immediately tries to connect to the internet and has problems (top box: Internet) Furthermore, a symptom (or another problem) shows up in the LAN box: it is shown as having "no IP" which is silly because it's a static IP and should know it despite being down. When I click on "LAN Setup", I try to change eth0's IP address, and then "OK" it. Back at the display screen, it still thinks there is "no IP". Clicking on the "LAN setup" again, it appears to have forgotten my entry. (nor does it read it from the file that Hardware Setup remembers). I close "DrakConnect" and it says it is syncing the system (good, now the menu should display changes). But when I reopen DrakConnect, it is once again stupid to the fact that I tried to change the device's IP. It has updated the display to reflect that I changed the domain name, for example. Actually, most of DrakConnect is fully dynamic and does not need X refreshes.... but how much? Is something crashing? Does the device not have an IP despite the system being configured to give it one? In other words, is its "having an IP" contingent on being LAN connected despite being static? How can I LAN connect without an IP? Catch 22. I tried Dynamic local IP also, with no luck either. The router refuses to give it an IP. Is my sis900 defective, or is my cable bad? the command "ping (router IP)" spits back "Network is unreachable", which is obvious.

Well, I went ahead installed 9.2 and completly got rid of the 9.0 install, but STILL cannot get conected to the net. It looks like the ethernet driver is set up just fine, but when I boot up, it won't connect, and I went to try and configue it, and it looks like I am missing some info. Do I need a gateway? IP? Netmask? dchp? Where can I get thesse?

Well, I was finnally able to get all 3 cds of the download edition, and then I did an upgrade install. I configured my ethernet. Now when ever I boot into linux, it says the eth0 failed, then later on, I get a black screen with no text. I would like to keep the packages I got with my mandrake 9.0 powerpack, but if not I guess I will just have to reinstall because getting on the internet is more important. I will miss all the kde games though.