[gentoo-user] yet more ALSA trouble

[Phil Thomson <hellomynameisphil@gmail.com>]

Hi,

Reading the archives, I noticed there's been a looooooooong thread on
ALSA trouble, so I hesitate to post a similar problem, but following
the relevant steps outlined in that thread so far hasn't seemed to
help my own problem with ALSA.

I've been trying to get ALSA working with my Nvidia nForce2 AC97
onboard sound card, but without much luck. I've been following the
guide at http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/alsa-guide.xml and I think I've
got all the steps done, but when I run alsaconf it goes through all
the steps till it gets to the "ALSA configurator". When I press OK
here, I get:

Running modules-update...
Loading driver...
 * Loading ALSA modules ...
 *   Loading: snd-card-0 ...                                              [ ok ]
 *   Loading: snd-pcm-oss ...                                             [ ok ]
 *   Loading: snd-seq ...                                                 [ ok ]
 * ERROR: Failed to load necessary drivers                                [ ok ]
 * Restoring Mixer Levels ...
 * No mixer config in /etc/asound.state, you have to unmute your card!    [ ok ]
Setting default volumes...
Saving the mixer setup used for this in /etc/asound.state.
/usr/sbin/alsactl: save_state:1163: No soundcards found...

and then:

 Now ALSA is ready to use.
 For adjustment of volumes, use your favorite mixer.

 Have a lot of fun!

and then no sound. If I open, for example, xmms and try to get it to
use alsa output, I get an error message. It's not that the sound is
muted; it says "Failed to open audio output: ALSA 1.2.10 output
plugin".

Here's some info about my system:

GentooBoxGuy ~ # uname -a
Linux GentooBoxGuy 2.6.12.5 #1 SMP Sat Nov 5 07:25:03 UTC 2005 i686
AMD Duron(tm) processor AuthenticAMD GNU/Linux

GentooBoxGuy ~ # ls -al /usr/src
total 12
drwxr-xr-x   3 root root 4096 Nov  5 07:02 .
drwxr-xr-x  16 root root 4096 Nov  8 17:14 ..
-rw-r--r--   1 root root    0 Nov  5 02:50 .keep
lrwxrwxrwx   1 root root   14 Nov  5 07:02 linux -> linux-2.6.12.5
drwxr-xr-x  19 root root 4096 Nov 13 22:01 linux-2.6.12.5

GentooBoxGuy ~ # lspci | grep audio
0000:00:06.0 Multimedia audio controller: nVidia Corporation nForce2
AC97 Audio Controler (MCP) (rev a1)

for which the ALSA soundcard matrix says intel8x0 is the appropriate driver.

Here's lsmod | grep snd:

snd_seq                34192  0
snd_seq_device          4876  1 snd_seq
snd_pcm_oss            37184  0
snd_mixer_oss          12992  1 snd_pcm_oss
snd_intel8x0           21664  0
snd_ac97_codec         52440  1 snd_intel8x0
snd_pcm                53572  3 snd_pcm_oss,snd_intel8x0,snd_ac97_codec
snd_timer              15972  2 snd_seq,snd_pcm
snd                    32004  8
snd_seq,snd_seq_device,snd_pcm_oss,snd_mixer_oss,snd_intel8x0,snd_ac97_codec,snd_pcm,snd_timer
snd_page_alloc          5604  2 snd_intel8x0,snd_pcm

GentooBoxGuy ~ # cat /etc/modules.d/alsa
# Alsa 0.9.X kernel modules' configuration file.
# $Header: /var/cvsroot/gentoo-x86/media-sound/alsa-utils/files/alsa-modules.conf-rc,v
1.4 2004/11/16 01:31:22 eradicator Exp $

# ALSA portion
# OSS/Free portion

##
## IMPORTANT:
## You need to customise this section for your specific sound card(s)
## and then run `update-modules' command.
## Read alsa-driver's INSTALL file in /usr/share/doc for more info.
##
##  ALSA portion
## alias snd-card-1 snd-ens1371
##  OSS/Free portion
## alias sound-slot-0 snd-card-0
## alias sound-slot-1 snd-card-1
##

# OSS/Free portion - card #1
##  OSS/Free portion - card #2
## alias sound-service-1-0 snd-mixer-oss
## alias sound-service-1-3 snd-pcm-oss
## alias sound-service-1-12 snd-pcm-oss

alias /dev/mixer snd-mixer-oss
alias /dev/dsp snd-pcm-oss
alias /dev/midi snd-seq-oss

# Set this to the correct number of cards.

# --- BEGIN: Generated by ALSACONF, do not edit. ---
# --- ALSACONF version 1.0.9a ---
alias snd-card-0 snd-intel8x0
alias sound-slot-0 snd-intel8x0
# --- END: Generated by ALSACONF, do not edit. ---

/proc/asound/cards has nothing in it.

I've tried my best to resolve this on my own, including Googling,
posting on the Gentoo forums, and reading the long thread about ALSA
which recently closed, but I'm still a bit of a newbie to Linux, so I
may be missing something obvious. Thanks in advance for any help or
advice.

PT



--
Phil Thomson, BFA, MFA
010100000110100001101001011011000010000001010100011010000110111101101101011100110110111101101110
hellomynameisphil@gmail.com
http://www.sfu.ca/~pthomson/

-- 
gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list