[SOLVED] ALSA does not work after re-installation of system

Xiol · Apprentice Joined: 24 Jul 2003 Posts: 209 Location: UK

I've recently reinstalled my system on a new hard drive and I can't bloody get my sound working again.

It's definately picking up my soundcard:

Tsonn · Guru Joined: 03 Jun 2004 Posts: 550

For some reason my system always sets PCM volume to zero on boot... have you checked that that isn't muted/zeroed?
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Xiol · Apprentice Joined: 24 Jul 2003 Posts: 209 Location: UK

Yes. I assure you all my volume controls are unmuted.

PCM and Master are at 100%, so are a few other things, too.

Tsonn · Guru Joined: 03 Jun 2004 Posts: 550

Just checking :-)

Have a look at the contents of /dev/sound... see if you can get any sound from each audio or dsp device by doing:

Xiol · Apprentice Joined: 24 Jul 2003 Posts: 209 Location: UK

Nope, nothing.

Tsonn · Guru Joined: 03 Jun 2004 Posts: 550

Hmm. You could try booting from a LiveCD and doing the same test there. (I think a LiveCD will autodetect such things...)
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Xiol · Apprentice Joined: 24 Jul 2003 Posts: 209 Location: UK

Yes, my sound works under a LiveCD and Windows.

I forgot to say as well that I am using my old kernel .config, so it's unlikely to be a kernel issue.

Tsonn · Guru Joined: 03 Jun 2004 Posts: 550

I'm afraid I'm out of good suggestions

You could try compiling the kernel using genkernel, to get one that's close to the LiveCD. But since logically it probably isn't a kernel problem, that's a bit of a long shot.
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vladtheinhaler · Posted: Sun Sep 19, 2004 2:44 am Post subject:

I as well would really appreciate it if someone could figure out what in the world is going on here, because I'm having the same exact problem. Everything Xiol has said so far applies to me, right down to the detail of both using an Audigy card.

Again, sound works flawlessly in Windows and on the LiveCD, and yes, everything is unmuted, no, cat'ing the device does not produce any output, and no, i do not recieve any errors when I play a file. In XMMS the visualization plugin even responds correctly, I just can't hear anything whatsoever.

Using genkernel to produce an intentionally bloated kernel sounds like an extremely unattractive option to me, though if no other solution can be found I'll do what must be done

.

jschellhaass · Guru Joined: 20 Jan 2004 Posts: 341

I had the same problem. All sound modules load without errors but no sound. This is what fixed sound for me. This is with an SB Live! 5.1 card that was working until I upgraded to kde 3.3

One of the things I found was the SB card was sharing an IRQ with the nvidia card so I moved the card to a different slot. This was strange since sound was working.

I also had to turn up IEC958 TTL;
amixer set 'IEC958 TTL' 100

Here are a couple of other things to check;
cat /proc/interrupts - do this in a console under X so it picks up the video card IRQ.
If the sound card is sharing an IRQ try booting the system with acpi=off.

Jeff

Xiol · Apprentice Joined: 24 Jul 2003 Posts: 209 Location: UK

lynxnyl · Posted: Sun Sep 19, 2004 11:05 am Post subject:

I have almost the same problems(tried the same things) with sblive 5.1. But, I can't make amixer to work at all.

Xiol · Apprentice Joined: 24 Jul 2003 Posts: 209 Location: UK

Ran 'alsaconf' as root.

Dunno what it did, but my sound is working now.

lynxnyl · Posted: Sun Sep 19, 2004 1:09 pm Post subject:

Nice script(it worked), I wonder why none of the guides mentioned it. Didn't save my skin though. Additionally, now I get

mcuddy · n00b Joined: 06 Dec 2004 Posts: 71

Had the same problem... looked through lots of newer threads, none mentioned alsaconf. I ran it and now my sound works. Thanks to whoever found this utility. :lol:

butters · Posted: Tue Dec 28, 2004 10:56 am Post subject:

I think my problem is similar to yours. I have a i8x0 chipset that is detected by ALSA during bootup. I can unmute the channels using amixer as root (but not as my regular user), but apps can't open the ALSA output device. I think this is a permissions problem, but can't figure it out. The alsaconf script doesn't detect any sound cards, but that may be because the ALSA driver is already loaded.
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