nForce sound problem

[Guest jeffchuck]

I'm having trouble with audio in Mandrake 10.1. I have an integrated nForce2 sound card, and I'm getting no sound at all. I tried all of the different drivers that came with Mandrake and got nothing. Finally, I installed the nVidia drivers and still got no results. After installing the drivers, I added this to modprobe.conf:

 

alias sound-slot-0 nvsound

 

and executed this:

 

modprobe nvsound

 

Whenever I start KDE, I get a message that says this:

 

Error while initializing the sound driver:

device /dev/dsp can't be opened (No such file or directory)

and indeed /dev/dsp does not exist.

 

This card works perfectly in Windows as well as in Ubuntu and Fedora, so it's definitely not a hardware problem. Does anybody know of anything that I can try?

[DragonMage]

Sometimes, getting no sound means mixer problems. That is, you need to turn the volumes up in the mixer and unmute the sound. I have NForce2 based motherboard and I use the typical ALSA snd-intel driver in Mandrake 10.1.

[adamw]

Get rid of nvsound - whatever the problem is, it's not the solution. Go back to snd-intel8x0 (I know that one works, I use it, and have on two nforce2 systems). If you don't get the error when starting KDE, that means sound is now working in some sense. Open a good mixer (kmix sucks - use alsamixergui , it's got its own package I think) and twiddle with everything. nforce2's mixer is notoriously insane, I had to futz around with it for about a day to get 5.1 sound working properly. It should work, though.

[Guest jeffchuck]

So I went back to the snd-intel8x0 driver, and I'm still getting the error. When I try to start alsamixer, it says this:

 

alsamixer: function snd_ctl_open failed for default: No such device

 

What else can I try???

[Guest jeffchuck]

Hmmm... somebody else suggested that I execute:

 

makedev audio

 

I did that and ended up with a directory /dev/audio which had dsp in it. I made a link /dev/dsp that points to /dev/audio/dsp, but when I start the sound system, I still get the error that /dev/dsp doesn't exist.

[adamw]

stuff under /dev is a bit special, you can't just create it as a regular file and have it work. How are you loading snd-intel8x0? Did you let draksound set it up for you or just stick a line in modprobe.conf? Is the sound service enabled? Is the alsa service enabled?

[Guest jeffchuck]

I used Mandrake Control Center to set it up and then enabled the sound system under the KDE settings. I had it set to auto, but when I changed it to ALSA, I got the same error.

 

I have also tried running alsaconf to no avail.

 

Here is my modprobe.conf, in case it helps anything:

 

alias eth0 forcedeth

remove snd-intel8x0 /sbin/modprobe -r snd-pcm-oss; /sbin/modprobe --first-time - r --ignore-remove snd-intel8x0

install snd-intel8x0 /sbin/modprobe --first-time --ignore-install snd-intel8x0 & & { /sbin/modprobe snd-pcm-oss; /bin/true; }

install usb-interface /sbin/modprobe ohci-hcd; /sbin/modprobe ehci-hcd; /bin/tru e

options bttv radio=0 gbuffers=4

 

alias snd-0 snd-intel8x0

# --- BEGIN: Generated by ALSACONF, do not edit. ---

# --- ALSACONF verion 1.0.6 ---

options snd device_mode=0666

alias snd-card-0 snd-intel8x0

alias sound-slot-0 snd-intel8x0

# --- END: Generated by ALSACONF, do not edit. ---