Alsa Sound Issues [Ugly Workaround]

Message

GBob · Post by **GBob** » Mon Dec 27, 2004 11:03 pm

Okay, so I'm using kernel 2.6.9-r13 with alsa, two soundcards, one of which is es1371 (pci card) and via82xx (on board.) On board is considered card 0, and the PCI (the one I use all the time) is card 1. (Actually it has addresses hw0,0 and hw0,1 due to alsa configs, the goal was to completely disable the on board sound.) Anyways, I've been fine for about a month, till I switched from gdm to entranced. (There may have been other changes, but that was the big one.)

After adding entrance to my package.keywords and running:

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emerge -u --deep world

along with updating the correct files to get entrance instead of gdm, I hit upon a problem. XMMS kept saying the soundcard was blocked. So, I run xmms as root, it works fine with exactly the same settings. *pause to watch me swear for a minute*

At this point I'm going oh, it must be a permission issue. But wait, since I'm using 2.6 with udev, my /dev is regenerated each boot. *pause to watch me swear some more.* So I start searching the forums, and start looking at my system. It appears that certian files in /dev/sound don't belong to the audio group. So I chmod it, and chgrp only to find that it doesn't work. *more swearing and searching.* I find the same problems in the /dev/snd directory. So I added this to my /etc/conf.d/local.start:

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chgrp -R audio /dev/sound
chgrp -R audio /dev/snd
chmod -R 770 /dev/snd
chmod -R 770 /dev/sound

to my /etc/conf.d/local.start

Ugly I know, but it seems to work. So here's my question: If /dev is created at boot, why are the permissions completely wrong? Which files do I need to edit so that I don't have to use ugly hacks as above?

*Please note, the extra swearing now due to this information being hidden in some config file there really should be a unified way of dealing with junk like this*

placeholder · Post by **placeholder** » Mon Dec 27, 2004 11:07 pm

Is your user in the "audio" group? If not, add them and you might be able to skip that dirty hack.

GBob · Post by **GBob** » Mon Dec 27, 2004 11:10 pm

Yes, my user is in the audio group.

I know it's a long post but if you look closely at the hack you'll see I'm giving permission only to owner and group, and I set the group to audio, recusively for /dev/sound and /dev/snd

The issue is the files, when created are owned by: root:root not root:audio for some files (mainly /dev/sound/dsp, ect.)

kroz · Post by **kroz** » Tue Dec 28, 2004 12:01 am

you should check /etc/security/console.perms to see if the audio/sound section has the right permisions.
(however, this might only exist if pam is installed)

GBob · Post by **GBob** » Tue Dec 28, 2004 12:28 am

okay had this:

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<console>  0600 <sound>      0600 root.audio

changed to:

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<console>  0660 <sound>      0660 root.audio

This is the correct way to solve, right?

placeholder · Post by **placeholder** » Tue Dec 28, 2004 9:06 am

I have....

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<console>  0600 <sound>      0600 root.audio

...in that file and it has never given me those problems. However, if that works then no worries.

butters · Post by **butters** » Tue Dec 28, 2004 11:27 am

I'm also having permissions problems with ALSA. The /dev/sound and /dev/snd devices are owned by root:root instead of root:audio, and it gets reset that way on reboot if I change it:

ls -ld /dev/sound
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 160 Dec 28 06:16 /dev/sound

I have the following in /etc/security/console.perms:

<console> 0660 <sound> 0660 root.audio

I can unmute my channels using amixer as root, but the state is not saved or restored by alsasound init script for some reason. Apps running as my regular user cannot open the alsa device. I am running 2.6.10 with ALSA compiled in statically and udev.

kroz · Post by **kroz** » Tue Dec 28, 2004 10:34 pm

i have

<console> 0600 <sound> 0600 root.audio

but

if that works then no worries

aetius · Post by **aetius** » Tue Jan 04, 2005 8:37 pm

See:

http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=72119

and

http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=31877

That might help.

paerez · Post by **paerez** » Fri Jan 21, 2005 8:34 pm

Yeah it is apparently a UDev bug.

Just by running "udevstart" as root it cleared me up, but make sure you have this:

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/etc/udev/permissions.d/50-udev.permissions

# audio devices
dsp*:root:audio:0660
audio*:root:audio:0660
midi*:root:audio:0660
mixer*:root:audio:0660
sequencer*:root:audio:0660
sound/*:root:audio:0660
snd/*:root:audio:0660
beep:root:audio:0660
admm*:root:audio:0660
adsp*:root:audio:0660
aload*:root:audio:0660
amidi*:root:audio:0660
dmfm*:root:audio:0660
dmmidi*:root:audio:0660
sndstat:root:audio:0660

and:

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/etc/security/console.perms

<console>  0660 <sound>      0600 root.audio

Many people have 0600 root:root, which may mess you up if you are trying to play through the audio group.

Supposedly "udevstart" is only a temporary fix

So be wary and good luck

mlsfit138 · Post by **mlsfit138** » Sun Jan 23, 2005 6:52 am

I use devfs, and have the same problem. Of course the second bug listed applies to devfs, not udev. I'm really tired of this and hope it gets resolved soon.

chunderbunny · Post by **chunderbunny** » Sun Jan 23, 2005 5:19 pm

The last time I checked up on this it's not a bug at all, but a "feature" of PAM. Either way, the devs said that they wouldn't fix it, but I didn't really understand why.

pvincent · Post by **pvincent** » Fri Jan 28, 2005 5:35 pm

I don't know if it is smart or not.
Anyway, I decide to edit /etc/conf.d/local
and append the 'udevstart' command.

Finally it works

I run on :
gentoo-dev-sources-2.6.10-r4
udev

Alsa Sound Issues [Ugly Workaround]

Alsa Sound Issues [Ugly Workaround]

Stupid fix !