A bit of a mystery, sound in linux.(OpenSuSE 10)

Edward78

Edward78

Edward78

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19 Oct 2002
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I have AC'97 onboard sound & had linux on the system for about 1.5 years. The sound never did work, I didn't really mind though, I have windows on the same system to game & if there was a video with sound I wanted to hear, again windows. Anyway, yesterday when I got on I noticed the red symbel with the white x was't there. So I unmuted it, turned the volumes to 100 & turned the speakers all the way up. Only got whitenoise/static. So in YaST I turned the volume to all the channels to 100, did a test & it worked. Then, today it is back to not working...:confused::confused: It isn't the settings, cause I tried all of them in YaST & can never get it to work on my own, but it detects the hardware. So I am not sure why it won't work. :confused::confused::confused:
 
AC97 stuff i believe is pretty well supported so it shouldn't be a driver issue. It is a possibility that you have the driver compiled as a module and it isn't auto loading. Something else might have activated it and allowed it to work briefly, but rebooting would have deactivated it again.

That's my guess anyway.
 
You probably want to switch the sound daemon in use :)
Try each of the options for playback in the System==> Preferences==> Hardware==> Sound dialog until you find the one that works.
Then switch all of the others to use the same sound daemon & you should be good to go.

Cheers

-Leezer-
 
leezer3 said:
You probably want to switch the sound daemon in use :)
Try each of the options for playback in the System==> Preferences==> Hardware==> Sound dialog until you find the one that works.
Then switch all of the others to use the same sound daemon & you should be good to go.

Cheers

-Leezer-
Click to expand...

Do you mean the sound setup in hardware in YaST? If so I tried all options for that card & it does not work. Just to be sure deamon is driver right?
 
Yup, sorry; Playing with FC7 ATM, & must have had that stuck in my mind :rolleyes:

Anything interesting in dmesg?
(Open a root terminal directly after booting & post the output of dmesg- Hopefully should say if there are any driver or other errors impacting things)

Your precise motherboard model & kernel version would be useful as well- If its got something odd in the way of AC97 (The ATI chipset Azalia implementation springs to mind here), then older kernels may have problems.

I'd also have a play with a few other livecd's & see if sound works there- Sometimes a distro will have completely inexplicable problems with a set of hardware.

Cheers

-Leezer-
 
leezer3 said:
Yup, sorry; Playing with FC7 ATM, & must have had that stuck in my mind :rolleyes:

Anything interesting in dmesg?
(Open a root terminal directly after booting & post the output of dmesg- Hopefully should say if there are any driver or other errors impacting things)

Your precise motherboard model & kernel version would be useful as well- If its got something odd in the way of AC97 (The ATI chipset Azalia implementation springs to mind here), then older kernels may have problems.

I'd also have a play with a few other livecd's & see if sound works there- Sometimes a distro will have completely inexplicable problems with a set of hardware.

Cheers

-Leezer-
Click to expand...

Linux version 2.6.13-15.16-default
When I type alsamixer, I get alsamixer: function snd_ctl_open failed for default: No such device

My board is
ASUSTeK Computer INC. K8U-X

I could not post dmesg it said I tried to post 7 images???
 
FWIW, the error when trying to open Alsamixer is simply alsa complaining that it can't find any soundcards present in your system.
You've got a nasty little analog devices chip in your board (Would be much easier if it were Realtek- They actually have properly working drivers!), but the ALSA project has a driver for it, so there's no reason why it shouldn't work straight-off though.

The first step needs to be a kernel upgrade (And I'd presume most of the core libraries; I don't know what updates you've applied to the system)- The current stable version is at 2.6.22- Your version is over 2 years old, and may easily be the cause of the problems. I'd strongly suggest upgrading to OpenSuSE 10.2 (The current stable version), but the current stable kernel ought to be available in the repositories.

Leave dmesg out of the equation for now :)

-Leezer-
 
leezer3 said:
FWIW, the error when trying to open Alsamixer is simply alsa complaining that it can't find any soundcards present in your system.
You've got a nasty little analog devices chip in your board (Would be much easier if it were Realtek- They actually have properly working drivers!), but the ALSA project has a driver for it, so there's no reason why it shouldn't work straight-off though.

The first step needs to be a kernel upgrade (And I'd presume most of the core libraries; I don't know what updates you've applied to the system)- The current stable version is at 2.6.22- Your version is over 2 years old, and may easily be the cause of the problems. I'd strongly suggest upgrading to OpenSuSE 10.2 (The current stable version), but the current stable kernel ought to be available in the repositories.

Leave dmesg out of the equation for now :)

-Leezer-
Click to expand...

Hmm, makes sense. Can I upgrade the kernel easily, not really a CLI person?
 
Hiya,
Follow the instructions on this page http://en.opensuse.org/YaST/YaST_Online_Update_-_10.0
This will apply the most recent updates to your current version of SUSE, which it sounds like may not have happened.
Reboot & see whats happened with the sound after this- If it's still broken, the next real step is to upgrade to SUSE 10.2 (While this is really the best course of action, upgrading between releases has the potential to break your system, & if it's fixable with the current version, thats going to be easier :) )

-Leezer-
 
I'd say dodgy hardware (Or possibly an extremely buggy driver) then :)
There might be something interesting in dmesg, but if its working, then thats the main thing.

FWIW, I'd still suggest upgrading to the latest updates & distro version ASAP.

-Leaezer-
 
leezer3 said:
I'd say dodgy hardware (Or possibly an extremely buggy driver) then :)
There might be something interesting in dmesg, but if its working, then thats the main thing.

FWIW, I'd still suggest upgrading to the latest updates & distro version ASAP.

-Leaezer-
Click to expand...

I was thinking of doing that, when I get a DVD-R drive up here I just may download 10.2.
 
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