alsa being impossible... [solved]

RayDude · Last edited by RayDude on Mon Aug 01, 2016 7:25 am; edited 1 time in total

Alsa stopped working from command line, KDE and browswer, but works fine in mythtv.

I'm using HDMI output and have run the gammut. Can someone suggest ideas of what to do, anything?

I've rechecked my .asoundrc, tweaked it. I've run mplayer and aplay from the command line specifying the hardware device directly. I've compared the device I'm using in mythtv with the devices specified in .asoundrc and on the mplayer command lines.

No sound.

I have made very little updates to my system.. I monkeyed withe the version of alsa-lib, etc installed, no difference. There is no error listed in the kernel log or in dmesg.

It stopped working a few days ago...

Any help would be appreciated.

Update: I had to disable a feature in the kernel called: Dynamic device file minor numbers

Then I had to change the device back to 3 (what it was years ago).

Sound is working now.

I presume this is a kernel bug or an issue between alsa and the kernel or something else.
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frostschutz · Advocate Joined: 22 Feb 2005 Posts: 2977 Location: Germany

any error messages? or it just plays audio but you don't hear anything?

krinn · Watchman Joined: 02 May 2003 Posts: 7470

agreeing with frostshutz logic there: if you don't have any errors, it's because you have none, and sound might be play and you cannot hear it.

i would explains this with: default set to another soundcard (and no more hdmi), mythtv is set to hdmi, others are using default.

RayDude · Posted: Sun Jul 31, 2016 8:36 pm Post subject:

Thanks for the replies.

I've checked all the settings. Everything is correct, as far as I can tell. There are no error messages. root can't play audio.

mythtv works fine. No idea why.

I tried a newer kernel, no difference.

I should have some time to go through everything again today and post it for people who want to debug their own system in the future...

I'm sure it will turn out to be some stupid mistake I made. It always is.
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Chiitoo · Posted: Sun Jul 31, 2016 9:11 pm Post subject: ><)))°€

One simple check while running an application that is supposedly playing audio could be something like this:

RayDude · Posted: Sun Jul 31, 2016 9:28 pm Post subject:

Details:

RayDude · Posted: Sun Jul 31, 2016 9:31 pm Post subject: Re: ><)))°€

RayDude · Posted: Mon Aug 01, 2016 2:51 am Post subject:

fuser /dev/snd/* shows the correct ownership of the pcm device.

I was running netflix in Chrome and did an fuser

RayDude · Posted: Mon Aug 01, 2016 6:35 am Post subject:

Sigh.

I can't get it to work.

Halp?
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RayDude · Posted: Mon Aug 01, 2016 7:44 pm Post subject:

See original post. Issue was the kernel.
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RayDude · Posted: Sun Aug 21, 2016 1:57 am Post subject:

Nevermind.
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RayDude · Posted: Thu Sep 01, 2016 2:02 am Post subject:

The problem is back. Mythtv works, everything else is muted...

No messages. No feedback nothing...

It just stopped working and rebooting, powering everything down, no sound...

Except in mythtv which works fine!
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Some day there will only be free software.

Buffoon · Veteran Joined: 17 Jun 2015 Posts: 1369 Location: EU or US

There is alsa-info.sh script, it used to be installed with alsa tools or utils package, in any case you can get it from ALSA website. Somebody may figure out what's wrong with your system if you pastebin the output of the script.

Chiitoo · Posted: Thu Sep 01, 2016 10:28 am Post subject:

RayDude · Posted: Mon Sep 12, 2016 3:15 pm Post subject: