payasam

Friends, no luck so far and I'm getting disheartened. The only problem in four or five years which this forum has not helped me solve.

Thank you, John.

[edit] Tried init 3. No improvement. I STILL DO NOT KNOW if I am doing the right things.

Not knowing how to "do an init3", I just typed that in as root: with the response "not recognised".

When I disable Pulse Audio, I do not get even a crackle from the speakers on start-up.

Running alsaconf brings this at the end: "Sound is being used by pid 19419". Does this tell us anything?

I have now used Linux for five years. Is it a sign of Progress that only MDV 2009 and MDV 2010 have given me trouble with sound?

I've tried that, Scarecrow. Didn't bring up the audio. Maybe this was because I didn't configure alsa. I don't know how to do that.

On 2010, the same problem.

In 2009 I had managed to get sound to work. Now that I have moved "up" to 2010, I am again without sound. There is a crackle from the speakers on booting up, but no welcome fanfare.

It was there, Greg. I always copy it when I install Everest. Just checked, and both programs are now running. Maybe it was just a matter of rebooting. Thank you.

Thanks. Have that already, installed because xzgv called for libjpeg.

I have just moved to 2010. Two programs, TreePad and Everest Dictionary, have stopped working. At the command prompt I get the error "undefined symbol: initPAnsiStrings". This has something to do with Kylix, it seems.

Eminently sensible, John. How are you, young friend?

Now I'm really confused, scarecrow. Will switching to a stock Firefox solve my Thunderbird problem? Firefox runs fine with PA, it's Thunderbird that doesn't run.

Scarecrow, I heard the shot when you let PulseAudio have it in the head. Don't hide, please.

Removing PA in the ordinary way is not an option: the package manager threatens to remove 173 packages in all, which probably wouldn't leave the computer good even for Pong.

Silly of me to look everywhere but in the right place.

I now have sound and video in VLC and MPlayer. However, now Thunderbird does not run. Here is what I get when I try to run it from the command line:

ALSA lib pcm_dmix.c:1008:(snd_pcm_dmix_open) unable to open slave

/usr/lib/thunderbird-2.0.0.23/run-mozilla.sh: line 131: 5538 Segmentation fault /usr/bin/soundwrapper "$prog" ${1+"$@"}

[edit] With Pulse Audio enabled in MCC, sound works but Thunderbird does not. When it is disabled, Thunderbird works but there is no sound.

I recently installed Linux Mint on a friend's computer. To get things moving it was necessary to remove Pulse Audio completely. Could that be the solution of my problem? If it is, how do I go about it?

Scarecrow, please see posts 22 and 23. I have a fresh installation of MDV + GNOME. No video. Cannot remember, and cannot find, the place where I specified X11. No audio either, but perhaps I shall set that right.

Scarecrow, I have for a long while preferred VLC, but I also have MPlayer and a couple of others. I don't know where to specify the video output.

[edit] In MPlayer, xv was specified. Videos began playing as soon as I changed it to X11. Now I must look into the other players.

Thank you all for your patience.

I have sound. It came on as soon as I turned off 3-D hardware acceleration in the graphical server section of MCC. Can't see the connection.

However, video files still do not play -- although images from the videos are visible as thumbnails in the file browser so things are not all wrong.

Maybe videos will start playing when I turn off the spelling check in Open Office.

In five years of using Mandrake/Mandriva/PCLOS, this is the only time I have had such absurd trouble. This is called Progress, I suppose.

ds17, thank you. I shall need a while to figure out the command I must used.

Here we are.

[root@localhost albert]# lsmod | grep snd
snd_intel8x0		   29112  2 
snd_ac97_codec		102592  1 snd_intel8x0
ac97_bus				1532  1 snd_ac97_codec
snd_seq_dummy		   2464  0 
snd_seq_oss			29504  0 
snd_seq_midi_event	  6812  1 snd_seq_oss
snd_seq				48912  5 snd_seq_dummy,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_midi_event
snd_seq_device		  6728  3 snd_seq_dummy,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq
snd_pcm_oss			37504  0 
snd_pcm				74496  3 snd_intel8x0,snd_ac97_codec,snd_pcm_oss
snd_timer			  20932  2 snd_seq,snd_pcm
snd_mixer_oss		  14428  1 snd_pcm_oss
snd					56516  13 snd_intel8x0,snd_ac97_codec,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq,snd_seq_device,snd_pcm_oss,snd_p
cm,snd_timer,snd_mixer_oss
soundcore			   6976  1 snd
snd_page_alloc		  8708  2 snd_intel8x0,snd_pcm

There is a file named alsa.conf, scarecrow. Trying to run it, even as root, brings a "permission denied" response. I also found a file called pulse-default.conf, in which every line begins with #DRAKSOUND.

Could this be a permissions matter? I have installed and re-installed several times. I left /home untouched but the permissions changed in it. I now get a "bash-3.2$" prompt rather than a "localhost user" one except as root.

[EDIT] I had not found an alsaconf with "whereis", so I pulled it in with urpmi. It ran, identified the sound card correctly, and quit after saying that it had done its work. However, there is still no sound. Urpmi reported that alsa-utils was already installed.

Thank you, David. That was the obvious thing to do, so I did it. No luck.

Thank you, all. Yes, scarecrow, it's Gnome. I say again, in MCC the sound card is correctly recognised.

[EDIT] Running alsaconf is no good: I get a "command not found" message.

Not a laptop, David, and no hardware mute control. I've disabled Pulse without effect. Must scour the system now for other volume and mute controls that may have got activated by themselves. Have an earphone somewhere but can't find the damn thing.

Yes, arctic. All was well on the older machine, same installation on same HDD. I should say that I get no start-up sound either.

Thank you. Right clicked on speaker icon. Sound not muted there. However, I do not see why muted sound should prevent video from playing.

I have just moved from a Pentium III machine to a Pentium IV one. MDV 2009.1 correctly recognises Intel 82801DB audio, but there is no sound from the speakers. When playing a music file, VLC's progress indicator moves -- but there is silence. When attempting to play a video file, VLC and MPlayer both show the screen just for a second before it disappears. The speakers are getting current and fiddling with the plug makes them crackle. Video not playing makes me think it cannot be a hardware problem.