Getting no sound from ALSA under 2.6.7

From: Kjetil Kjernsmo (kjetil_at_kjernsmo.net)
Date: 06/30/04

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    To: debian-user@lists.debian.org
    Date: Wed, 30 Jun 2004 20:33:00 +0200
    
    

    Hi all!

    I finally decided it was time to upgrade to the 2.6 kernel. So I have
    compiled myself a kernel, based on Linus' 2.6.7 with the Ruby patches.
    I need those for my local multiuser setup. It all seems to work very
    nicely, except that I lost my sound.

    The problem is, I'm not really getting any error messages I'm able to
    see. Everything seems quite nice, it is just that I'm not hearing
    anything...

    Has anybody got ALSA working with the alsa-base and alsa-utils currently
    in Sarge? There are some examples lacking (bug reports have been filed
    on those, I'm sure they are working on it), so I'm feeling I'm just
    blindly trying different things but having no clue what they are
    supposed to do.

    I guess a good start is to cite the output of my lsmod:

    Module Size Used by
    appletalk 35700 -
    ipx 28688 -
    p8022 2244 -
    psnap 3912 -
    llc 7704 -
    nfs 105556 -
    lockd 63816 -
    sunrpc 152100 -
    ppp_deflate 6148 -
    bsd_comp 5924 -
    ppp_async 12068 -
    ipv6 247040 -
    ppp_generic 29080 -
    slhc 7748 -
    ipt_MASQUERADE 3716 -
    iptable_nat 25040 -
    ipt_LOG 6372 -
    iptable_filter 2724 -
    parport_pc 34432 -
    parport 41032 -
    snd_cmipci 32996 -
    snd_pcm_oss 53832 -
    snd_mixer_oss 19332 -
    snd_pcm 97028 -
    snd_page_alloc 11468 -
    snd_opl3_lib 10980 -
    snd_timer 25000 -
    snd_hwdep 8928 -
    snd_mpu401_uart 7812 -
    snd_rawmidi 24928 -
    snd_seq_device 8012 -
    snd 53412 -
    apm 17904 -
    8139too 24356 -
    mii 4868 -

    We see snd_cmipci, and cmipci is good, that's the driver for my sound
    card. First I tried compiling most stuff into the kernel, but the one
    I'm running now, the whole sound system are in modules. How does this
    look?

    I've been experimenting with files here and there to get it to
    understand that I'm using ALSA 1.0, for example:
    root@owl:/etc/alsa> find .
    .
    ./modutils
    ./modutils/0.9
    ./modutils/0.9/modules-0.9.conf
    ./modutils/0.9/file4k6mBy
    ./modutils/0.9/fileygRrGd
    ./modutils/0.9/1.0
    ./modutils/0.5
    ./modutils/1.0
    ./modutils/1.0/1.0
    ./0.9

    And symlinks here and there....:
    root@owl:/etc/modprobe.d> ls -l
    [snip]
    lrwxr-xr-x 1 root root 22 Jun 30 15:12 alsa
    -> /etc/alsa/modutils/1.0
    -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 86 May 2 12:50 alsa-base

    ...and
    root@owl:/etc/modutils> ls -l
    [snip]
    lrwxr-xr-x 1 root root 22 Jun 30 15:09 alsa
    -> /etc/alsa/modutils/1.0
    -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 26 May 2 12:50 alsa-base
    -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 121 Apr 6 2002 alsa-path

    Then, I've ran alsaconf, and it just comes out telling me everything is
    OK. Also, I tried to insert some magic in one of these 1.0 files and
    run dpkg-reconfigure. It too told me everything was OK. update-modules
    and restarting ALSA I've done it all... But not in a very structured
    manner, since I don't have much idea what all these things are supposed
    to do... :-)

    Then, there's the mixer. I've yanked everything I could up to max.
    Interestingly, as I push the volume of the "PC speakers" up to 100, I
    (increasingly) hear a lot of noise on the speakers. Furthermore, it is
    clearly generated by the PC, as the noise follows the noises from the
    box, e.g. hard drive noises... So, it seems there is something coming
    out from the sound card, but it isn't the music I was expecting to
    hear... :-)

    For some time, I thought it was mostly that I didn't get modules loaded
    or something. I supposed that that's what the missing examples are
    about. But from the lsmod, to me it looks like they are...

    I've got quite a lot of trouble with arts lately. I'm using KDE, and
    usually play music with noatun, and arts seems to have some problems at
    startup, killing itself and stuff. However, I've been testing with
    playing "known good files" with alsaplayer, so this shouldn't have any
    impact, I thought.

    I've tried ALSA before, with varying degrees of success, I've got it
    working for some periods, and some periods not, and I can't really
    point out why. Recently, I've been sticking to OSS. Except for just
    checking that I could compile and boot 2.6 in the late -testing period,
    it is the first time I've tried 2.6.

    Finally, I saw some RC bugs have recently been closed. Anybody know if
    those would have had any effect, and if we'll see new uploads soon?

    Any hints, please?

    Best,

    Kjetil

    -- 
    Kjetil Kjernsmo
    Astrophysicist/IT Consultant/Skeptic/Ski-orienteer/Orienteer/Mountaineer
    kjetil@kjernsmo.net  webmaster@skepsis.no  editor@learn-orienteering.org
    Homepage: http://www.kjetil.kjernsmo.net/        OpenPGP KeyID: 6A6A0BBC
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