ALSA/KDE hell...

BiggJ · Posted: Fri Aug 27, 2004 5:31 am Post subject: ALSA/KDE hell...

All,

I have gotten sound working (under KDE) following the alsa tutorial and using the forums a dozen or so times, but I am totally at a loss. Nothing seems to be working. Here is what I have:

* ALSA built in.
* I have checked the volumes and unmuted in KMix.

zsoltika · Posted: Tue Aug 31, 2004 5:49 am Post subject:

IMHO you should check this too:

BiggJ · Posted: Tue Aug 31, 2004 4:25 pm Post subject:

Here it is...

zshay · n00b Joined: 31 Aug 2004 Posts: 10

I had a perfectly running alsa setup with a 2.6.8 kernel and my emu10k1. I upgraded to the 2.6.8-r3 and sound quit working; however, I do not think it was the kernel upgrade. It appears that maybe my LiveDrive! broke. I did run kde for the first time and after that the sound no longer worked. I am thinking that somehow my LiveDrive! has been muted. I checked alsamixer and nothing is different in there. When I run multimedia applications (xmms, mplayer, mpg123, etc.), everything functions properly with the exception of sound output. I assume it is functioning properly because a `cat /dev/dsp` produces prolific amounts of garbage when sound events occur.

Thanks in Advance,

Zach

BiggJ · Posted: Tue Aug 31, 2004 9:04 pm Post subject:

Interesting....

zshay · n00b Joined: 31 Aug 2004 Posts: 10

well....it shouldn't produce anything unless your soundcard is being used...for instance cat it, and then play a sound (routing thru dsp)

BiggJ · Posted: Wed Sep 01, 2004 12:35 am Post subject:

Yeah, still nothing. Thanks though.

saluk · n00b Joined: 25 Aug 2004 Posts: 34

You may be having the same problem that I was having...

I can't, for the life of me, get Alsa to work when it is compiled into the kernel. I was using gentoo-dev-r1, and I managed to get alsa to work when I took ALL sound options out of the kernel and emerged alsa-driver. When I upgraded to r3, I decided to try making all the alsa stuff modules instead of compiled in, one alsaconf run and it found my sound card and I had sound. So try recompiling the kernel using modules for alsa, and if that doesn't work try removing it altogether and emerging alsa-driver.

iplayfast · Posted: Thu Sep 02, 2004 5:54 am Post subject:

Last night I has alsa working on my new kde 3.3 reiser4 2.6 something kernel. Life was glorious. I emerged rosegarden and played midi files. I emerged festival and my computer talked to me.

Today. KDE can not make a sound, even though in the control panel/sound system/Test Sound works.

Also XMMS thinks it's playing songs, and plays them very fast. (But no sound comes out). In the past if XMMS couldn't make a sound it would complain.

Lastly, it looks like jack is no longer working. (I'm fuzzy on how to use it anyways so maybe it is the culprit).

Watching this thread hoping for an answer.

asciiwhite · n00b Joined: 02 Sep 2004 Posts: 12

I'm too have big issues with ALSA and a UDEV 2.6.8-rc3 system...

# lspci | grep -i audio
0000:00:05.0 Multimedia audio controller: nVidia Corporation nForce MultiMedia audio [Via VT82C686B] (rev a2)
0000:00:06.0 Multimedia audio controller: nVidia Corporation nForce2 AC97 Audio Controler (MCP) (rev a1)

# uname -s -m -p -o -v -r
Linux 2.6.8-gentoo-r3 #1 Tue Aug 31 12:43:05 EST 2004 i686 AMD Athlon(tm) XP 2600+ GNU/Linux

# cat /proc/asound/version
Advanced Linux Sound Architecture Driver Version 1.0.4 (Mon May 17 14:31:44 2004 UTC).
Compiled on Aug 31 2004 for kernel 2.6.8-gentoo-r3.

# cat /etc/modules.d/alsa

# ALSA portion
alias char-major-116 snd
# OSS/Free portion
alias char-major-14 soundcore

## ALSA portion
alias char-major-116 snd
alias snd-card-0 snd-intel8x0
## alias snd-card-1 snd-ens1371
## OSS/Free portion
alias sound-slot-0 snd-card-0
## alias sound-slot-1 snd-card-1
##

# OSS/Free portion - card #1
alias sound-service-0-0 snd-mixer-oss
alias sound-service-0-1 snd-seq-oss
alias sound-service-0-3 snd-pcm-oss
alias sound-service-0-8 snd-seq-oss
alias sound-service-0-12 snd-pcm-oss

alias /dev/mixer snd-mixer-oss
alias /dev/dsp snd-pcm-oss
alias /dev/midi snd-seq-oss

# Set this to the correct number of cards.
options snd cards_limit=1

# cat /home/asciiwhite/.asoundrc
pcm.dmix0 {
type dmix
ipc_key 673138

slave {
pcm "hw:0,0"

rate 48000

period_time 0
#buffer_time 320000

period_size 4096
buffer_size 4096
}

bindings {
0 0
1 1
}
}

# 'dsp0' is espected by OSS emulation etc.
pcm.dsp0 {
type plug
slave.pcm "dmix0"
}

ctl.dsp0 {
type hw
card 0
}

pcm.!default {
type plug
slave.pcm "dmix0"
}

ctl.!default {
type hw
card 0
}

Right now i can get everyhting to work with alsa-oss wrapper but that limits me to one channel.

I can't for the life of me get alsa to work fully.
Xmms looks like its playing but no sound...
Mplaye works fine with alsa
KDE sound system just doesnt want to work.

Most of my games wont work without using alsa-oss wrapper...

Am i doomed to single channel sound utill i fork out 20 bucks for a soundblaster!!!???

Dylan D.

BiggJ · Posted: Thu Sep 02, 2004 4:21 pm Post subject:

iplayfast · Posted: Tue Sep 07, 2004 2:25 am Post subject:

If your problem is kde/alsa http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=79924 might be able to help.

Also it seems that the path isn't set up correctly for the sound's locations. If I put the complete path to the sound it plays it, (on mine, after the above fix), but if I use the defaults it doesn't.

nimatar · Posted: Tue Sep 07, 2004 8:30 am Post subject:

Same problem here, same sound card with build-in drivers, i followed the Gentoo Linux ALSA Guide without oss compatibility, and everything seemed to work fine, only at the first reboot no sound is given, i also tryed to unmerge arts thinking maybe that created the problem, but nada :cry:

. Also i think it isn't the problem form the kde bugzilla because it occours also whitout starting kde.
I will tray building the sound cart support as a module; hope it will help.

iplayfast · Posted: Tue Sep 07, 2004 2:10 pm Post subject:

Follow the link I posted. They give two methods, the first one is to go into .kde and delete knotify configurations and *.event stuff (read the link for the exact names). The second is to do something with some programs. I didn't see the second one until after I did the first. Anyways, on restarting kde things started working again.

firephoto · Posted: Tue Sep 07, 2004 4:58 pm Post subject:

I just put in a SB Live! last night and it was working ok and teamspeak worked when I first tried it then I was checking out all the mixer settings with Kmix and a click on something caused TS to stop working with the mic. I tried a lot of different things but the mic seemed to be dead to TS till cleared out /tmp/ of anything not new then I logged off of kde and as a normal user I just "rm -rf /tmp/*" and started KDE up and I had my mic back. Seems there was a tmp socket in there I guess that was causing some troubles. Some of this happened when I tried to get TS to run without artsdsp but I guess it was reusing the old socket? I'm new to hardware mixing with sound so I don't know what it can and can't do and have arts running still but it does seem that I don't need it for some of the apps that I used "artsdsp" to launch. It's the emu10k1 drivers I'm using which btw have a LOT of mixer settings especially when you look in alsamixer.

antonlacon · Apprentice Joined: 27 Jun 2004 Posts: 257

I've got a cs46xx card, with compiled in alsa to a 2.6.8 gentoo-dev kernel making use of udev. Sound was working beautifully, hardware mixing an all until I rebooted. Sound is gone.

Arts does not exist on my system -- The KDE sound system is not enabled at start up.

I've deleted the files suggested by the kde bug thread above (knotifyrc, *.eventsrc. I've deleted /tmp. I've even deleted all of ~/.kde* to make sure it all died.

Sound hasn't returned. I'm using mplayer and bmp to test. Both worked correctly before the reboot and neither has had their configurations changed.

At this point I'd nuke knotify if I knew how without removing all of the control center.

Eskarel · Posted: Tue Sep 07, 2004 11:01 pm Post subject:

Ok, here's the solution to at least some of your problems, I've posted this before, and I guess I'll post it again.

KDE >=3.2.3 includes alsa support as part of the Arts server, as such, and being the tremendous gits they are they modify your volume settings the first time you start kde. In particular they turn the mixer switch for the digital output to on. On my computer, and based on posts here, a lot of others, this causes volume to either disappear or turn staticy if you're not actually using the digital output switch. Start up kde, open up kmixer or alsamixer if you like, in kmixer you have to go to file and advanced or something like that to show the switches, can't recall exactly and I got rid of kde so I can't look it up, but you'll find it. Then turn off the digital output switch or mute it in alsamixer and try again, you should be working fine again.

If this doesn't help you, then you've got a different bug, but if it does, it's a lot faster than waiting for kde to fix it for you.

nimatar · Posted: Wed Sep 08, 2004 8:41 am Post subject:

Gread Eskarel, thank you very much! That worked 4 me!

In kmix i checked avanced and muted "audigy analog/digital output jack"

Eskarel you're my hero

zshay · n00b Joined: 31 Aug 2004 Posts: 10

Well, as I suspected alsa was functioning perfectly. Somehow my sound config (asound.???) got bunked. I shutdown the alsa service, deleted this file (in /etc) and then rebooted. If you have it compiled as modules you can just unload and then reload the module. When I reset my values in the mixer, all was right in the world (or at least with a scope limited to my computer). I figured it was this file because I noticed that I had to *MUTE* channels in order to hear them. If any of you all are still having trouble I would suggest to try this. As this is very weird, I suspect this probably isn't a common problem.

Best of luck,

ZShay

Relyimah · Posted: Wed Sep 08, 2004 2:50 pm Post subject:

Hey all, I thought I'd post this as it seems to bee a similar thing.

I had alsa working perfectly before I formatted my box, and did nothing differently in terms of kernel and alsa setup when i reinstalled, and bam, no sound. In the end I had to resort to oss. Someone mentioned an issue with udev, and I think that may be my problem (running wit udev now instead of dev) Any Ideas?

zshay · n00b Joined: 31 Aug 2004 Posts: 10

Relyimah · Posted: Thu Sep 09, 2004 3:27 am Post subject:

yeah, alsa-libs is a dependency of alsa-utils.

The main problem i was having with alsa is that I could not set the PCM volume, i could mute or unmuie it, but could not set the volume... everything else worked as per normal. it seems that my sound wanted that volume to run everything as sounds seemed to play fine, just no volume
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