gkrellm and sound scope (using alsa)

beuselinck

Hello

Has anybody been able to get the sound scope in gkrellm working (with ALSA)
This is what i've emerged:

genterminl · Posted: Tue Jul 19, 2005 12:16 am Post subject:

The answer seems to have been posted to that same freshrpms thread. Apparently forwarded from the author of gkrellm-ss:
---------------
It turned out it was a simple case of ALSA capture somehow getting turned
off with an ALSA upgrade. So maybe check your ALSA mixer Capture settings.
Just run:

$ amixer get Capture
and
$ amixer get Mix

The last two lines of output indicate if Capture is on or off.
If either of these are off, try setting them on with:

$ amixer set Capture cap
$ amixer set Mix cap
----------------
I don't seem to have those controls - but I played with alsamixer and turned on capture for several channels where it was off.

GorlowMV · Posted: Fri Jan 26, 2007 7:19 pm Post subject:

does not working...

genterminl · Posted: Fri Jan 26, 2007 11:55 pm Post subject:

This is a different problem, but I get it also. Just wait a few seconds and click on the sound meter panel in gkrellm. Sometimes you get the same popup again, but usually it just starts working. I have not been able to figure out what causes it.

GorlowMV · Posted: Sat Jan 27, 2007 3:01 pm Post subject:

I try it... Not working...

genterminl · Posted: Sat Jan 27, 2007 3:27 pm Post subject:

What, exactly, is not working? What is it doing and what do you expect it to do?

Does sound work in general? Can you play a CD or an mp3 file?
If you click on the SoundScope panel in gkrellm, what happens?
If you hold your mouse over the panel, do two buttons appear in the corner? What happens if you click on them?

GorlowMV · Posted: Sat Jan 27, 2007 10:27 pm Post subject:

yes, i can play everything, but gkrellmss doesn't work
if i enable plugin into gkrellm config - http://sheridan.stavcom.ru/data/filez/images/screenshots/erors/gkrellm/gkrellmss_00.png
if i click onto ss panel - http://sheridan.stavcom.ru/data/filez/images/screenshots/erors/gkrellm/gkrellmss_00.png
if i select sound source ALSA - http://sheridan.stavcom.ru/data/filez/images/screenshots/erors/gkrellm/gkrellmss_00.png
where i can see "alsa lib console error message"?
ESS disabled in kernel

genterminl · Posted: Wed Feb 21, 2007 12:25 am Post subject:

I don't have a solution yet, but I think I'm getting closer. The console is the terminal from which you started X. What this means is that the error message is in the stderr output from X. If you do a normal startx, this should just be on the first virtual console. Unfortunately, by the time you exit X, it will probably have scrolled far off the screen. I have startx aliased to "startx 1>xxlog 2>xxerr" so I can do "grep -i alsa xxerr" and I get

ALSA lib control.c:910:(snd_ctl_open_noupdate) Invalid CTL /dev/sound/mixer
gkrellm-volume amixer: Control info /dev/sound/mixer error: No such file or directory

Unfortunately, this doesn't seem useful, since /dev/sound/mixer exists, and I have access to it.

Also - the above directions for amixer don't seem right for me - I don't have either a Mix or a Capture device. If you just type "amixer" and look through the output, several of the controls will have "Capture" and [on] or [off]. See if you can use "amixer set control cap on" picking the appropriate control name from the output of amixer. [Sorry - I see you do have Capture and Mix controls, both apparently with capture on. Hopefully you can find the console error and it will be more help than mine.]

HazeC5 · 3.7.10

Hi
I'd install gkrelmss 10 minutes ago, and I've exactly the same error, than your screenshot, with alsa.

My Use for alsa-lib are:

genterminl

Having been annoyed by this error on and off for over ten years, I finally dug into the gkrellmss code, and managed to add enough debugging output to track down the cause. The pop-up error says 'Can't open ALSA monitoring. Look for an "ALSA lib" console error message.' although I never managed to find any such error. That message is due to a call to snd_pcm_open returning -2 (No such file or directory) which didn't make much sense, until more debug output showed it was trying to open plughw:0,0, and on my PC, card 0 is currently disabled. I'm guessing that over the years, as my PC and audio devices changed, when I only had one audio output card configured in Alsa, gkrellmss worked, but if I had more than one card defined, and the first card was disabled, it failed.

Solution: with gkrellm NOT running, look in ~/.gkrellm2/user-config for a line beginning "sound ALSA device" and change the plughw:0,0 to the appropriate device. You can find that by printing /proc/asound/cards. Right now, I have not found any way to configure this from within gkrellm itself, but will discuss on their mailing list.