Soundcard Installation

+/- details

User	rlh20002
Incident Number	29751
Date	2002/08/20 16:59
Status	Incident closed
Paid	Yes

Product	8.2
Architecture	x86_32
Scope	Installation

Products owned

Lines in bold below have not yet been seen by the customer - those in blue are from the customer

Username : Date : Action : Comments [ close all ]

rlh20002 : 20/08/02 04:59 PM : Incident created

- I have a Soundblaster Live! sound card on my machine. However, I do not have
any sound. When I go into Control Center -> Hardware -> Hardware List and
select "Sound Cards", I see "Creative Labs SBLive! EMU10000", which is
correct, but when I click on it and run the configuration tools, HardDrake
launches and says it's playing an 8 bit sample but nothing happens. I can't
hear a thing.

I do not know how to fix this problem. Any input would be helpful.

One additional problem I have had. Ever since I installed this system
yesterday, everytime I boot up I get a message to the effect "Mounting file
system" [FAILED] when I boot. What causes this and how do I fix it? I can
access my files just fine, but that error seems troubling.

Thanks.

	Linegod_7611 : 20/08/02 05:42 PM : Reply received
	- Go to 'K/Multimedia/Sound' and open 'KMix'. Adjust the volume and save. Open up a console and type 'diskdrake'. See if there are any file systems that are not mounted. Attempt to mount them, and see if it clears the error. If not, report back which mount point is not mounting. ------ Note: If this answer resolves your problem, please remember to close this incident.

	Linegod_7611 : 20/08/02 05:42 PM : Reply received
	- Go to 'K/Multimedia/Sound' and open 'KMix'. Adjust the volume and save. Open up a console and type 'diskdrake'. See if there are any file systems that are not mounted. Attempt to mount them, and see if it clears the error. If not, report back which mount point is not mounting. ------ Note: If this answer resolves your problem, please remember to close this incident.

rlh20002 : 20/08/02 09:53 PM : More info provided

- Regarding the Soundblaster issue: I did what was recommended, still no sound.
Now when I go to Control Center, Hardware, Hardware List, Sound Cards,
and Click on the COnfiguration Tool, I still get a list including my
Soundcard, but when I select it and say OK, I get the following long msg:

/lib/modules/2.4.18-6mdk/alsa/snd-card-emu10k1.o.gz: init_module: No such device
modprobe: insmod /lib/modules/2.4.18-6mdk/alsa/snd-card-emu10k1.o.ga failed
modprobe: insmod sound-slot-0 failed

How do I fix this? I've been playing with downloading updated drivers from
the Creative Labs website, so I have been shuffling files in and out of this
directory.

Regarding the disk mounting issue:
I have run the DiskDrake utility and it says there is a floppy that is not
mounted. My desktop seems to say otherwise (when I right click on 'floppy'.
I do not know what to do.

rlh20002 : 20/08/02 09:54 PM : More info provided

	Olivier_FAURAX_6403 : 21/08/02 02:34 PM : Reply received
	- try using "sndconfig"

	rlh20002 : 21/08/02 02:56 PM : More info provided
	- Still no success. It plays a sample but I don't hear a thing.

Olivier_FAURAX_6403 : 21/08/02 03:18 PM : Reply received

- perhaps try with this help:

The following entries are Mandriva Expert standard texts, added to the expert's comments: [ about ]

SOUND
There are many variables which affect why sound will or will not work. They dall into the following major categories:
1. ISA sound card unrecognized.
2. ALSA loaded for a sound card that works only with OSS.
3. Inappropriate use of harddrake and sndconfig which overloads sound with two or more drivers.
4. Use of gdm as a login manager which has a tendency to forget to transfer ownership of the sound devices to the logged-in user.
5. A change of user number which causes the same effect, non-ownership of sound device files until the files that control this are initialized with the new user number.
ISA
It is usually easy to detect an ISA soundcard if you are a user. If the card fits in the black slots rather than the white or brown ones on your motherboard, then it is ISA. There are specifics for this configuration which are documented if you happen to have one. It will not be detailed here. Please note that new motherboards have one or no ISA slots now and they call the ISA slot "Legacy". No cases of on-board sound have been shown to use ISA.
PCI
Sound cards and on-board audio are usually this interface today. The question becomes,
ALSA, OSS, or proprietary?
ALSA is default set up unless no ALSA drivers exist. ALSA (Advanced Linux Sound Architecture) is an effort to take a kernel not really designed for sound editing and to add a huge repository of options. Multiple sound cards are possible and many cards run in an OSS-compatibility mode.
OSS (Open Sound Systems) is a combination of proprietary support from www.opensound.com and drivers they have released openly after paying the cost of development.
Some sound cards now come with linux drivers. Generally speaking, there should be at least a source wrapper for the sound driver so that it can be compiled as a kernel module. Some sound drivers are provided along with video drivers for special boards, such as those based on the NForce chipset.
WHAT TO DO IF SOUND DOESN'T WORK.
We are not covering digital Dolby sound or USB headphone issues here, but what happens if the KDE start theme doesn't play when KDE comes up for the first time? GNOME won't play sound events until the user logs in to Sawfish and selects Configuration=>sound from the menu and check both boxes on the window that pops up, then logs out and logs into GNOME.
First
run
lspcidrake
does a sound facility show?
If so, you can proceed. If not, you probably have ISA sound.
Now run
cat /etc/modules.conf
likely this will show sound modules being loaded like this:
alias sound-slot-0 snd-card-i8x0_audio
above ... pcm-snd-oss
That is an actual non-working setup for the SiS 735 chipset which sndconfig will tell you is the SiS 7012 sound card which is unsupported.
To make it work, we edit /etc/modules.conf
alias sound i810_audio
replaces the two former lines and then everything works.
And for the SiS 630,
alias sound trident
will work just fine while the setup from install will rarely work.
The SiS 620 and 530 may require the Yamaha YMF or the ESSSolo1 drivers, again in an OSS configuration (single sound card).
So what happens if the ALSA driver is loaded and someone uses sndconfig to load the OSS driver?
Variable results occur. Sound may die after 10 minutes, or sound very scratchy, or just not work at all or work very well indeed. If you have sound and
chkconfig --del alsa
leaves you with sound still running, it is likely you had both drivers loaded.
SCENARIOS
#1 NO SOUND and KDE souns server gives error message, but lspcidrake shows a sound facility and /etc/modules.conf has one or more sound aliases, AND volume controls are set high enough to hear sound if it is playing.
Use lspcidrake and the modules information to hunt down a driver for the sound at
file:/lib/modules/2.4.18-6mdk/kernel/drivers/sound
Try taking out the sound configuration shown in /etc/modules.conf and substituting
alias sound (modulename)
stripping the .o.gz from the name of the file you want to try.
It is best to first try (in a superuser terminal window)
# chkconfig --del alsa
# modprobe (modulename)
If you get error messages, then your driver choice is incorrect and you move on to the next on your list of candidates, until you find one that installs or run out of modules.
Once tha alias is found, save /etc/modules.conf and reboot. You should now hear something.
SCENARIO
#2 I HAVE SOUND BUT THE CD DOESN'T PLAY AUDIO...
There are several reasons why this may happen:
a. You have a cheapie computer built windows ME time or later which omitted the 3-wire audio cable between the CD drive and the sound card. (This fix costs $2.00) NOT CHECKING for it may cost days.
b. You have a CDRW and /dev/cdrom doesn't point to /dev/scd0
Superuser terminal window
# ln -fs /dev/scd0 /dev/cdrom
Note that since sound plays off of /dev/cdrom by default, if you have TWO CD type devices (as in a DVD and a CDRW) ONE of them will play and the other will not.
Often the DVD will provide sound for movies even though it will not play audio CDs because movie sound is usually drawn from /dev/dvd.
c. You have a DVD drive and it doesn't play audio and it is your only CD type device, let's say for example it is /dev/hdc (you can check the output of dmesg to discover which one it is).
Terminal window as superuser
# ln -fs /dev/hdc /dev/cdrom
# ln -fs /dev/hdc /dev/dvd
Yes unfortunately, many install scenarios leave the /dev/dvd link hanging without a referent.
OK I think I have covered the major techniques and their pitfalls.

rlh20002 : 21/08/02 03:48 PM : More info provided

- I am in the process of doing what you suggested. But here's another data
point I just collected. I am running Sound Server under Control Center,
and when I tell it to "Auto Detect" and it asks me if I want to restart the
sound server, it gives me the following message:

Error while initializing the sound driver:
device /dev/dsp can't be opened (no such file or directory)

The sound server will continue using the null output device.

I also noticed that if I go to "system bell" and click on that, the system
bell does chime when I test it, but nothing else does (if I want to test
the regular sound).

Does this provide any additional information.

	Olivier_FAURAX_6403 : 21/08/02 03:59 PM : Reply received
	- did you try the alsa drivers ?

	rlh20002 : 21/08/02 04:01 PM : More info provided
	- Yes, I get the same result for ALSA, autodetect, and Open Sound System

	Olivier_FAURAX_6403 : 21/08/02 04:04 PM : Reply received
	- usefull link (perhaps): http://panopticon.csustan.edu/thood/pnpbios.html

	Olivier_FAURAX_6403 : 21/08/02 04:04 PM : Reply received
	- usefull link (perhaps): http://panopticon.csustan.edu/thood/pnpbios.html

	rlh20002 : 21/08/02 06:48 PM : Incident closed
	-

Soundcard Installation

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