ALSA in Gentoo 2008

auris · n00b Joined: 27 Aug 2008 Posts: 18

Hi all,
I have installed Gentoo before a few days, but I just can't get ALSA working

I have alsa driver in my kernel (like on my Debian system where sound works fine) and installed alsa-libs and alsa-utils.
Lspci will show me my card correctly:
"00:11.5 Multimedia audio controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8233/A/8235/8237 AC97 Audio Controller (rev 70)"
Alsamixer will show it also correctly, I'll set the sound (of course run /etc/init.d/alsasound start) and try it, but I don't hear anything. MP3Blaster don't show me the mixer menu and no other player can use ALSA.
I also tried alsaconf, but it didn't find any cards...
Does anybody know where the problem is? I really don't know.

sugar · Posted: Wed Aug 27, 2008 8:50 am Post subject:

have you unmuted the card?
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auris · n00b Joined: 27 Aug 2008 Posts: 18

As I wrote, I started alsamixer and set the volume and MP3Blaster still doesn't show alsamixer, only like null so something must be wrong but I have no idea what.

AnimAlf · Apprentice Joined: 20 Jun 2008 Posts: 229 Location: tgn

¿is user in audio group?

~ $ groups | grep audio || sudo gpasswd -a $USERNAME audio
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auris · n00b Joined: 27 Aug 2008 Posts: 18

Of course he is

AnimAlf · Apprentice Joined: 20 Jun 2008 Posts: 229 Location: tgn

what says /proc/asound/cards?
~ # cat /proc/asound/cards

Have you thrown something to /dev/audio?
~ # echo > /dev/audio
Isn't it heard?
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auris · n00b Joined: 27 Aug 2008 Posts: 18

cat /proc/asound/cards will show me my sound card...
0 [V8251 ]: VIA8237 - VIA 8251
VIA 8251 with ALC655 at 0xd000, irq 22

And echo > /dev/audio won't do anything even in Debian where sound works fine.

pappy_mcfae · Posted: Wed Aug 27, 2008 7:12 pm Post subject:

It could be a kernel misconfiguration. Please post your kernel .config.

Thanks.

Blessed be!
Pappy
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Jesselnz · Posted: Thu Aug 28, 2008 6:01 am Post subject:

Sorry about hijacking the topic, but I'm having exactly the same problem. I just resolved another problem where I was only getting sound from one speaker, and now I'm getting no sound at all... everything is unmuted in alsamixer, I'm in the audio group, the proper devices appear in /dev/snd, my card is in /proc/asound/cards... and yet I'm not getting any sound. cat /dev/urandom > /dev/audio does nothing. I know I'm using the right driver (ice1724). Here's my kernel configuration:

pappy_mcfae · Posted: Thu Aug 28, 2008 7:05 am Post subject:

The best suggestion I can offer you is to put the following line in your /etc/make.conf file:

Jesselnz · Posted: Thu Aug 28, 2008 7:34 am Post subject:

I read in another topic that it doesn't work for 24, but I'll try it. Thanks.

auris · n00b Joined: 27 Aug 2008 Posts: 18

Here it is.

mirojira · l33t Joined: 18 Feb 2006 Posts: 685

It is not recommended to install alsa in-kernel <y> but as modules <m>.

auris · n00b Joined: 27 Aug 2008 Posts: 18

pappy_mcfae · Posted: Thu Aug 28, 2008 7:42 pm Post subject:

While Linux is Linux for all intent and purpose, there are differences in how they operate at boot time, package management, etc. Having worked with Debian and Slackware, I know that each one starts alsa differently. And so does Gentoo. In some cases, you can get sound to work properly by compiling it into the kernel, even when you're working with Gentoo.

However, the documentation does recommend that you set things up as modules, most likely for unloading at shutdown. If your setup works, then it's right. See my sig below.

Blessed be!
Pappy
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NeddySeagoon · Posted: Thu Aug 28, 2008 7:48 pm Post subject:

auris,

It makes no difference to the way the code operates if alsa is built into the kernel or loaded later as modules.
The kernel setups are different as are the /etc/modules.d/alsa files.

However, modules are better for diagnostics. Some users need to use trial and error to find the correct module paramters to pass at module initialisation time. Thats inconvienient if the module is built it as changing module parameters requires a reboot.
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jburns · Posted: Fri Aug 29, 2008 2:25 am Post subject:

I installed gentoo 2008 on a computer and sound did not work ( except for one sound byte ) until after I emerged gnome.

auris · n00b Joined: 27 Aug 2008 Posts: 18

Ok, thank you, I didn't know that. Now I'll try to recompile kernel and I'll hope that it will work fine

auris · n00b Joined: 27 Aug 2008 Posts: 18

So I tried and it didn't work fine

It wrote:

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Fri Aug 29, 2008 6:02 pm Post subject:

auris,

Despite what you may have read, you do not need Gnome to get sound. We need a methodical approach to discovering what you have and what you need.

First, what you need. Post the output of lspci. Unless you have a very old ISA sound card, that will tell us what you need.

When you have the right kernel modules loaded, you will have files in /dev/snd and /dev/sound.
The first is your pure ALSA, the latter your OSS emulated sound interfaces. When you have them your kernel is is reasonable shape.

We can take it from there when you post more information.
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NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

jburns · Posted: Fri Aug 29, 2008 7:17 pm Post subject:

When I said that I did not have sound until I emerged gnome, I did not mean to say that gnome was needed. What I meant was that loading gnome loaded some package other than alsa that was needed for sound. Emerging gnome added gstreamer plugins and other media-libs packages.

I did not change my alsa configuration when I loaded gnome.

auris · n00b Joined: 27 Aug 2008 Posts: 18

My lspci output is in the first post:
"00:11.5 Multimedia audio controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8233/A/8235/8237 AC97 Audio Controller (rev 70)"
Also /proc/asound/cards
"0 [V8251 ]: VIA8237 - VIA 8251
VIA 8251 with ALC655 at 0xd000, irq 22"
It is integrated sound card on my chipset.
Like I wrote, I have the same kernel config like in my Debian where everything works fine.

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Fri Aug 29, 2008 7:57 pm Post subject:

auris,

The line

auris · n00b Joined: 27 Aug 2008 Posts: 18

My lsmod:

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Fri Aug 29, 2008 9:23 pm Post subject:

auris,

From reading your lsmod, your snd_via82xx loaded before snd_emu10k1, so your on board via device is sound card 0 and the Creative 10k1 would be sound card 1 but from your /dev/snd you only have a control file and thats for card 0. I guess you don't have any Creative 10k1 hardware fitted. Thats supported by your lspci.

The missing /dev/sound is due to the OSS emualtion modules