added kernel, now alsa unable to open pcm device [SOLVED]

[ExecutorElassus]

I emerge --sync'd yesterday, and then emerged the 5.8 kernel. I haven't booted into it yet (nvidia-drivers-390.* doesn't work with it), but now when I boot into the old kernel, my sound doesn't work. Any program -- Audacious, browsers, mplayer, etc -- I get an error that it was "unable to open default pcm device." However, I can use 'aplay -vv somefile.wav' to play a soundfile, so I know alsa is working.

I haven't actually changed anything with the running kernel. What's going wrong here? It was working fine yesterday with the same kernel, and all I've emerged in between was the 5.8 kernel, nvidia-drivers, and wireguard-tools (which require a bunch of extra kernel settings I haven't finished setting yet. So how can I fix this?

Addendum: one other thing I did last night was unmerge consolekit. So is this something going wrong with elogind?

Cheers,

EE

UPDATE: this is from the logfile for mplayer:

Code: Select all

[vo] Video output opengl-hq not found!
ALSA lib /var/tmp/portage/media-libs/alsa-lib-1.2.3.2/work/alsa-lib-1.2.3.2/src/pcm/pcm_dmix.c:1090:(snd_pcm_dmix_open) unable to open slave
[ao/alsa] Playback open error: Permission denied
ALSA lib /var/tmp/portage/media-libs/alsa-lib-1.2.3.2/work/alsa-lib-1.2.3.2/src/pcm/pcm_dmix.c:1090:(snd_pcm_dmix_open) unable to open slave
[ao/alsa] Playback open error: Permission denied

Why is mplayer trying to connect to the portage working directory for an alsa install? That directory doesn't even exist.

UPDATE2: It turns out that unmerging consolekit somehow dropped my user from the audio group. Manually re-adding got audio working again.

[Hu]

It is not opening a Portage temporary directory. It is reporting the full path to the source file which generates that message. It is not reporting the file/device it actually failed to open, so the error message is less useful than it could be.

[ExecutorElassus]

Hi Hu,

but as I pointed out, that source file didn't actually exist.

In any case, I solved the issue by adding my user to the audio group. What I don't understand was how unmerging consolekit got my user dropped from that group in the first place.

[Hu]

Right, it was deleted after the build finished. My point was that you were misunderstanding the message. The file does not need to exist, because its name only printed so that you can know what file you would read if you want to see context for the error message. MPlayer was not trying to access the source file.

I don't know why ConsoleKit would have manipulated group membership, but it's possible that you were never actually in the audio group and instead ConsoleKit was playing games with permissions or credentials to make sound work anyway.