[gentoo-user] I think I messed up USE flag by using -alsa as Gnome has no sound

[gentoo-user] I think I messed up USE flag by using -alsa as Gnome has no sound

[Richard Watson]

Hi - I've just finished compiling Gnome and have no sound whatsoever.
Looking at my USE flags I noticed I had inadvertently set -alsa as a flag.

At this stage I've changed the flag to alsa and re-run genkernel. But still
no sound. Do I have to recompile everything from scratch or have I made an
incorrect diagnosis of the problem?

As always any help would be appreciated
--
Regards, Richard
ECRM Imaging Systems




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Re: [gentoo-user] I think I messed up USE flag by using -alsa as Gnome has no sound

[Holly Bostick]

Richard Watson schreef:
> Hi - I've just finished compiling Gnome and have no sound whatsoever.
> Looking at my USE flags I noticed I had inadvertently set -alsa as a flag.
> 
> At this stage I've changed the flag to alsa and re-run genkernel. But still
> no sound. Do I have to recompile everything from scratch or have I made an
> incorrect diagnosis of the problem?
> 
> As always any help would be appreciated
> --
> Regards, Richard
> ECRM Imaging Systems
> 
> 
> 
> 
Have you loaded the newly-compiled alsa driver modules for your sound
card, run alsaconf and unmuted the mixer via alsamixer?

Holly
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Re: [gentoo-user] I think I messed up USE flag by using -alsa as Gnome has no sound

[Szabo Bence]

2005-07-12, k keltezéssel 01.17-kor Holly Bostick ezt írta:
> Richard Watson schreef:
> > Hi - I've just finished compiling Gnome and have no sound whatsoever.
> > Looking at my USE flags I noticed I had inadvertently set -alsa as a flag.
> > 
> > At this stage I've changed the flag to alsa and re-run genkernel. But still
> > no sound. Do I have to recompile everything from scratch or have I made an
> > incorrect diagnosis of the problem?
> > 
> > As always any help would be appreciated
> > --
> > Regards, Richard
> > ECRM Imaging Systems
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > 
> Have you loaded the newly-compiled alsa driver modules for your sound
> card, run alsaconf and unmuted the mixer via alsamixer?
> 
> Holly
Hi! I haven't got any sound too. I emerged all the alsa things, and when
I alsaconf tries to start the sound I get this:

Loading driver...
 * Loading ALSA modules ...
 *  Loading:snd-card-0 ...
 * ERROR: Failed to load necessary drivers

I have Nvidia Nforce chipset (alsaconf recognises it well), and I
emerged everything with alsa USE flag, in the kernel alsa-stuff are
enabled too. I've made it from the gentoo alsa howto, but it just
do not work... Maybe the driver sould be installed somehow? Or did
I miss something?

Thx!

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Re: [gentoo-user] I think I messed up USE flag by using -alsa as Gnome has no sound

[Bob Sanders]

On Tue, 12 Jul 2005 03:10:34 +0200
Szabo Bence <szbence@gmail.com> wrote:


> Hi! I haven't got any sound too. I emerged all the alsa things, and when
> I alsaconf tries to start the sound I get this:
> 
> Loading driver...
>  * Loading ALSA modules ...
>  *  Loading:snd-card-0 ...
>  * ERROR: Failed to load necessary drivers
> 

In /etc/modules.d/alsa, do you have - 

##  ALSA portion
alias snd-card-0 snd-intel8x0

And did you do a modules-update ?

Bob
-  
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Re: [gentoo-user] I think I messed up USE flag by using -alsa as Gnome has no sound

[Szabo Bence]

2005-07-11, h keltezéssel 20.22-kor Bob Sanders ezt írta:
> On Tue, 12 Jul 2005 03:10:34 +0200
> Szabo Bence <szbence@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> > Hi! I haven't got any sound too. I emerged all the alsa things, and when
> > I alsaconf tries to start the sound I get this:
> > 
> > Loading driver...
> >  * Loading ALSA modules ...
> >  *  Loading:snd-card-0 ...
> >  * ERROR: Failed to load necessary drivers
> > 
> 
> In /etc/modules.d/alsa, do you have - 
> 
> ##  ALSA portion
> alias snd-card-0 snd-intel8x0
> 
> And did you do a modules-update ?
> 
> Bob
> -  
Yeah, I've done this.

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RE: [gentoo-user] I think I messed up USE flag by using -alsa as Gnome has no sound

[Richard Watson]

>> Have you loaded the newly-compiled alsa driver modules for your sound
>> card, run alsaconf and unmuted the mixer via alsamixer?
>> Holly

Hi again - I tried
# emerge -s alsa 
and got loads of output. Would you know what the correct emerge command is
for the alsa driver modules? Does alsaconf come as part of the driver
install? 

I had installed alsamixer (with -alsa ...) earlier and it loads a blank
interface with no controls at all.

At this stage I'm doing 
# emerge --update --ask --deep --verbose --newuse --tree world 
as setting alsa on is asking quite few items to want to recompile.

Thanks, Richard

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Re: [gentoo-user] I think I messed up USE flag by using -alsa as Gnome has no sound

[Holly Bostick]

Richard Watson schreef:
>>>Have you loaded the newly-compiled alsa driver modules for your sound
>>>card, run alsaconf and unmuted the mixer via alsamixer?
>>>Holly
> 
> 
> Hi again - I tried
> # emerge -s alsa 
> and got loads of output. Would you know what the correct emerge command is
> for the alsa driver modules? Does alsaconf come as part of the driver
> install? 

If you are using a 2.6-series kernel, the alsa drivers are part of your
*kernel* config, and no additional driver package is necessary to emerge
(although some people like to, but that's another story).

Alsaconf is part of the alsa-utils package. If you are using the
kernel's alsa drivers (which are perfectly adequate), you probably want
to emerge all the other packages that are *not* alsa-driver in order to
get everything working properly under all circumstances:

alsa-lib (required)

alsa-headers (probably required)

alsa-utils (required)

alsa-tools (required)

alsa-oss (probably optional)

alsa-firmware (probably optional)

You might also want a systray applet for the mixer if you're using KDE
or GNOME:

kamix

gamix

> 
> I had installed alsamixer (with -alsa ...) earlier and it loads a blank
> interface with no controls at all.
> 
> At this stage I'm doing 
> # emerge --update --ask --deep --verbose --newuse --tree world 
> as setting alsa on is asking quite few items to want to recompile.


OK, stop where you are. Hands off the 'Enter' key ;-) .

First, you need to confirm your kernel config. I'm going to assume that
we're going for a standard setup with the kernel modules compiled into
the kernel, rather than as loadable nodules.

Let's look at the output of

lsmod

and see what modules are already loaded. You're looking for items that
start with

snd-

and also items that contain

i810

But don't worry if you don't see them; statically compiled kernel
drivers don't show in this list anyway. But it's a pre-check before we
check the kernel itself. Now, you could look at the .config file in a
text editor, but ... spare me. Especially if you're a genkernel user,
that's even more confusing to figure out. Since I don't know if you are
in fact a genkernel user, and I furthermore don't know a thing about
genkernel (meaning, I don't know squat about initrds), we're just going
to look at the kernel the way I know how to do it

cd /usr/src/linux

make menuconfig

NOTE: if you are a genkernel user, you can (apparently) also do
genkernel --menuconfig

for the same effect, and then you'll still get a new initrd if you make
changes (and save them).

OK, now that we're in the menuconfig, we want to know the following:

1. Is support for the onboard components of your motherboard compiled
into the kernel (I am assuming that the soundcard is enabled in your
BIOS, which is necessary for it to work at all)?

2. Is support for a) sound, b) ALSA and c)ALSA OSS emulation available,
and if so, as a module or statically?

3. Are the drivers for your particular sound card compiled, and if so,
statically or as a module?

So check these settings:

Device Drivers=>ATA/ATAPI/MFM/RLL support=> AMD and nVidia IDE support


Device Drivers=>Character Devices=>NVIDIA nForce/nForce2 chipset support


(these are both to add support for what is *supposed* to be
'other'motherboard resources than onboard sound, but-- since I don't
know how motherboards are wired, thus 'what is really connected to
what'-- I tend to feel that one wants to confirm any and all 'special'
drivers for one's mobo chipset. Besides which, next after sound is all
straightened out, you may well want to configure support for 3D hardware
accelleration for your video card, in which case you'll be happy to
already know whether your mobo's agp support is active or not :-) ).

But these are the important ones to check:

Device Drivers=>Sound=> Sound card support

Device Drivers=>Sound=>ALSA=> Advanced Linux Sound Architecture

Device Drivers=>Sound=>ALSA=> Sequencer support

Device Drivers=>Sound=>ALSA=> OSS Mixer API


Device Drivers=>Sound=>ALSA=> OSS PCM (digital audio) API

Device Drivers=>Sound=>ALSA=> OSS Sequencer API

Device Drivers=>Sound=>ALSA=>PCI devices=>Intel/SiS/nVidia/AMD/ALi AC97
Controller

These are the 'necessary drivers' for your sound card, and the ALSA/ALSA
OSS emulation backend.

We can argue for a month as to whether these should be compiled as
modules or statically, but I have found with both onboard sound and an
external sound card that the following config offers the least issues
(* = static, M = module):

Sound card support M

ALSA * (however, if you want to use the alsa-driver package, this *must*
be M, or the emerge will fail)

Sequencer support M

OSS Mixer API M

OSS PCM M

OSS Sequencer * (no choice)

Actual card driver M

If any of these are missing, you'll have to select them, recompile the
kernel and reboot to the recompiled kernel.

Your problems may already be solved, if you have previously set up
alsasound and the like, but the drivers could not be found to load
anything. In which case, have fun!

If it still doesn't work, we can then move on to Part 2: setting up Alsa
on the system (as opposed to setting it up in the kernel).

And don't worry-- it's kind of a pain, but you pretty much only have to
do all this work once.

HTH,
Holly

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RE: [gentoo-user] I think I messed up USE flag by using -alsa as Gnome has no sound

[Richard Watson]

> At this stage I'm doing 
> # emerge --update --ask --deep --verbose --newuse --tree world 
> as setting alsa on is asking quite few items to want to recompile.

>>OK, stop where you are. Hands off the 'Enter' key ;-)

Hi Holly - To late ... I'd already hit enter ... When I looked at my system
afterwards I had sound ..!! Everything seems to work OK at the moment.
Obviously recompiling with USE=alsa worked. 

I am however going to work through your very informative post. I'm a
genkernel user for no other reason than I just have not made the time to
build a kernel manually (Young children play havoc with time management).

Regards and thanks, Richard


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Re: [gentoo-user] I think I messed up USE flag by using -alsa as Gnome has no sound

[Allan Gottlieb]

At Tue, 12 Jul 2005 16:48:01 +1000 Richard Watson <waty@bigpond.net.au> wrote:

>>> Have you loaded the newly-compiled alsa driver modules for your sound
>>> card, run alsaconf and unmuted the mixer via alsamixer?
>>> Holly
>
> Hi again - I tried
> # emerge -s alsa 
> and got loads of output. Would you know what the correct emerge command is
> for the alsa driver modules? Does alsaconf come as part of the driver
> install? 
>
> I had installed alsamixer (with -alsa ...) earlier and it loads a blank
> interface with no controls at all.
>
> At this stage I'm doing 
> # emerge --update --ask --deep --verbose --newuse --tree world 

One of my favorite commands.

> as setting alsa on is asking quite few items to want to recompile.

For me, the key to sound was adding "gstreamer" to USE (and then
running one of my favorite commands).  I use gnome.

allan
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Re: [gentoo-user] I think I messed up USE flag by using -alsa as Gnome has no sound

[Volker Armin Hemmann]

On Tuesday 12 July 2005 01:12, Richard Watson wrote:
> Hi - I've just finished compiling Gnome and have no sound whatsoever.
> Looking at my USE flags I noticed I had inadvertently set -alsa as a flag.
>
> At this stage I've changed the flag to alsa and re-run genkernel. But still
> no sound. Do I have to recompile everything from scratch or have I made an
> incorrect diagnosis of the problem?
>
> As always any help would be appreciated
> --
> Regards, Richard
> ECRM Imaging Systems
>
>
>
>
> --
> No virus found in this outgoing message.
> Checked by AVG Anti-Virus.
> Version: 7.0.323 / Virus Database: 267.8.12/46 - Release Date: 11/07/2005

genkernel, which problem should it solve?

try emerge --newuse world, to see what has to recompile.
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Re: [gentoo-user] I think I messed up USE flag by using -alsa as Gnome has no sound

[Allan Gottlieb]

At Tue, 12 Jul 2005 09:12:53 +1000 Richard Watson <waty@bigpond.net.au> wrote:

> Hi - I've just finished compiling Gnome and have no sound whatsoever.
> Looking at my USE flags I noticed I had inadvertently set -alsa as a flag.
>
> At this stage I've changed the flag to alsa and re-run genkernel. But still
> no sound. Do I have to recompile everything from scratch or have I made an
> incorrect diagnosis of the problem?
>
> As always any help would be appreciated

When you change USE flags, you should run

   emerge --update --newuse world

to recompile the affected packages.

Actually I run

   emerge --update --ask --deep --verbose --newuse --tree world

allan
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