wahur Posted November 4, 2005 Report Share Posted November 4, 2005 (edited) Been through all this forum and it seems a common problem. Have a laptop. Installed Mandrake 2005LE on it. No sound. No system notifications, no playing CDs, no playing mp3, test sound in kcontrol does not play, nothing. Kubuntu Breezy was on that laptop before and had sound working out of the box so I know it CAN work. According to Harddrake chipset is correct (ICH4 845G/GL Chipset Audio Controller). Default driver as shown in the topic. Mixer is OK (unmuted) Have tried to fiddle with harddrake, alsaconf, have changed to OSS, played with arts settings in kcontrol, every advice I have found in this forum, not a beep. One thing adviced here I could not do was changing between digital and analog output cause I have not found a place to do that. I was surprised to see that while 'sound' service is on, 'alsa' is stopped. Attempt to start it resulted in a message that alsa is already running. Dont know if its OK or not. If I tried to check if some app is occupying sound I got a message that '/dev/dsp does not exist'. Maybe this gives a hint to someone more experienced than I am. Edited November 8, 2005 by wahur Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
devries Posted November 4, 2005 Report Share Posted November 4, 2005 That error means that the driver isn't installed correctly. A driver is called module in Linux (sort off). When the module is loaded (installed in Windows) it creates a device (a point in /dev (/dev is a folder. Just open a file browser and change directory to /dev to check if it's there) where applications connect with to play sound. What you need to do is find out what module your soundchip uses (with google) and run the config tools (always use harddrake in mandriva) again. Make sure the correct module get's loaded. Do this with all audio-application shutdown, including kmix in the systray. There are 2 kinds of drivers: for alsa and for oss (linux soundarchitectures.) If you use alsa you need an alsa module. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wahur Posted November 4, 2005 Author Report Share Posted November 4, 2005 (edited) OK, a bit more digging done. I noted that lsmod shows module snd_intel8x0 being loaded there are also number of other modules starting with snd_ while harddrake says it should use snd-intel8x0 such a subtle difference. So maybe its about wrong module name? am I on a right track? If yes then how to repair it? Ahh, and btw it is not 2005LE cause I actually did immediate urpmi upgrade to 2006 Edited November 4, 2005 by wahur Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
devries Posted November 4, 2005 Report Share Posted November 4, 2005 These are the same modules. I think the problems you have are caused by the upgrade (uograding often goes wrong). Better do a clean install of 2006.0. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wahur Posted November 4, 2005 Author Report Share Posted November 4, 2005 These are the same modules. I think the problems you have are caused by the upgrade (uograding often goes wrong). Better do a clean install of 2006.0. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Not a clubmember. And in a near future cannot become one. Otherwise would have done clean install for sure. And I do not think upgrading was a problem - even though I did not do an extensive testing at least system sounds did not work in 2005LE as well. And while I have done various Mandrake installs to different computers since ver 8.0 I still have not seen one where sound would work out of the box. And finally, while I have seen lots of people with problems related to the same module in this forum and elsewhere, not many have managed to solve their situation. Advice given is concentrated on checking if channels are not muted then checking hardrake settings (which are OK almost always) then trying alsaconf and switching around kcontrol settings . Wash, rinse, repeat. Without any explanation why would all this mucking around make any difference. And finally, if nothing helps, reinstall . This last option has become popular lately as Linux installation is so easy. And then we laugh that Windows always wants to reboot... This is called bug my friend. Maybe one that comes up in some rare condition, but it is still bug. And, as in most cases with Linux, there is probably not-so-difficult solution to it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
devries Posted November 4, 2005 Report Share Posted November 4, 2005 Why these steps: -1- checking channels - contrary to your experience most people have no problems with sound, only with mixer options (and earlier alsa versions muted the main channel as default) so that is always the first thing to check (and with soundcards with multiple inputs many people plug the speakersjacks in the´wrong´input') -2- harddrake settings: when every mixer setting has been tried and still no sound there is probably something wrong with the sound config. runnning a config app like harddrake (just like running xfdrake if X doesn´t work) ususally solves it. With specific hardware, isa cards for example, running alsaconf or soundcnf can help. For other cards stick with harddrake. -3- kcontrol- only if there is a problem with arts. You can install mandriva 2006.0 with a network install. Download the boot.iso, chhose network install, http, dhcp, chack the mirror path if it points to a 2006.0 directory'. Else try updating alsa. Thac has latest alsa rpms. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ianw1974 Posted November 4, 2005 Report Share Posted November 4, 2005 Just like Windows you have to configure your devices, with modules or drivers. ALSACONF is what configures the sound card. At bootup have you pressed ESC to see the boot process, and is it actually loading ALSA? You have to run alsaconf as root, so you have to type: su (supply root password when prompted) alsaconf and follow the instructions for configuring sound. It should auto-detect no problems. If you did an upgrade, how did you do it? Did you use: urpmi --auto-select --auto Have you upgraded the kernel to the correct version for 2006? I had problems with a 10.1 Official Upgrade to LE2005 but I had to make sure the kernel was updated too, this isn't done with the upgrade. Also, you would need to do: updatedb slocate rpmnew and replace any .conf files with the .conf.rpmnew files found. This isn't done automatically during a urpmi upgrade. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wahur Posted November 4, 2005 Author Report Share Posted November 4, 2005 su (supply root password when prompted) alsaconf Ohh, spare me :D I totally agree that Mandrake is not the best distro to learn things but I have learned THAT much since Mandrake 8.0 and follow the instructions for configuring sound. It should auto-detect no problems. Right, it does. So does Harddrake. But it still does not work. If you did an upgrade, how did you do it? Did you use: urpmi --auto-select --auto I did urpmi urpmi, then urpmi --auto-select --auto, then urpmi kernel and chose 2.6 multimedia Also, you would need to do: updatedb slocate rpmnew and replace any .conf files with the .conf.rpmnew files found. This isn't done automatically during a urpmi upgrade. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Aha. That was not done. did it now, there was only one - sysctl.conf. It sounds important, but is it something relevant to our current problem? Also, to keep you entertained :) I followed devries advice to install new alsa stuff from thac repo. Now things changed a bit. /sbin/lsmod says: snd_intel8x0 33472 0 grep sound-slot /etc/modules.conf says nothing /sbin/fuser -v /dev/dsp says nothing (previously it said that this file or folder does not exist) /sbin/chkconfig --list alsa says alsa 0:ära 1:ära 2:peal 3:peal 4:peal 5:peal 6:ära where ära would mean something like off, peal would mean something like on. So it does not give me errors anymore, but it does not give me sound, either. Been through mixer/harddrake routine as well, nothing. Had to uninstall alsaconf as it would conflict with Thacs stuff. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
devries Posted November 4, 2005 Report Share Posted November 4, 2005 No errors probably means a mixer problem. Open console and type: alsamixer and unmute every channel :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wahur Posted November 5, 2005 Author Report Share Posted November 5, 2005 No errors probably means a mixer problem. Open console and type: alsamixer and unmute every channel :) <{POST_SNAPBACK}> You were actually almost right :) What I could not here in the office, I could later at home - namely that I do have sound. Almost. I cannot make out any sound from laptop speakers even though it might be present. I hear faint sound, near the limit of being hearable at all, from headphones. And if I plugged small speakers to the same headphone plug, sound was as loud as it normally should be. Only the quality was quite horrible, crackling like a radio under weak coverage. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
devries Posted November 5, 2005 Report Share Posted November 5, 2005 Almost there :). This probably means that there is some mixer switch that pipes the audio to the 'wrong' audio out. For example if I want to send sound to my external amplifier through spdif (I'm using a via8237 so this is just an example) I have to set IEC958 Playback AC97-SPSA to 0. Look for something similar in alsamixer for your chip (and look at the alsa documentation) The crackling sound is probably caused by the PCM cranked up. Just set it lower. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wahur Posted November 8, 2005 Author Report Share Posted November 8, 2005 Thanks devries! Everything solved now. 1. Lowered PCM and the quality of sound is quite normal now. 2. Because I have (almost) no network at home I had no access to alsa documentation. So I had to experiment. After some poking around I found that after unmuting "External Amplifier" (just "External" in alsamixer) sound came out of laptop speakers loud and clear. External amplifier I have always associated with big stacks of hardware that music freaks or musicians have and use. Never in earth would I think that something like this is hidden somewhere inside my laptop (and actually used to produce the sound). :D Hope it helps some others with the same prob! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
devries Posted November 9, 2005 Report Share Posted November 9, 2005 These mixer options are always a bit trial and error and the channel labels aren´t much help either. :) Anyway problem solved. I hope the satisfaction that you have finally sound on your laptop with Mandriva compensates for all the time you spent on the problem. :D Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maideen Posted December 25, 2005 Report Share Posted December 25, 2005 hi, after installing the alsamixer, when I try to run it the following error pop out, wat should I do? alsamixer:function snd_ctl_open failed for default:No such file or directory I am new to Linux and know a few DOS command only...............thanks Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scarecrow Posted December 25, 2005 Report Share Posted December 25, 2005 (edited) hi, after installing the alsamixer, when I try to run it the following error pop out, wat should I do? alsamixer:function snd_ctl_open failed for default:No such file or directory I am new to Linux and know a few DOS command only...............thanks <{POST_SNAPBACK}> What audiocard/chipset? Any chance it is a Realtek HD Audio? And anyway you'd better open a new thread about it, unless you also have an Intel 8X0 soundcard. Edited December 25, 2005 by scarecrow Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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