alsamixer error?

[JockVSJock]

Trying to use alsa for my sound. I am using soundblaster card and a nice set of speakers. I have to turn the volumn all of the way up just to get normal sound, which really sucks.

I've ran the alsa script under /etc/init.d/alsa-autoconfig and it prepares the modules that I need.

When I run alsamixer I get the following error:

alsamixer: function snd_ctl_open failed for default: No such file or directory



How do I know that I have all of the right alsa stuff installed, when I apt-get install, I get quite a list of things.

thanks

[Cuddles]

JockVSJock,

From what I know, considering the HELL I went through getting ALSA to work, the "alsamixer" is provided within the "alsa-utils" package. If you can't run the alsamixer, then you don't have alsa running, or not completely, that is.

This is the extent of my knowledge, on the subject, to get ALSA, you need three things:
(1) ALSA drivers for your specific Sound Card
(2) ALSA-Base
(3) ALSA-Utils

You might want to view my two threads, currently running on this forum, "General Questions" -=- Topics: "Sound Editing K3b and cdaudio, sound slowed?" and "Shopping List (Part II)" - the exact topics are not known, but the jest is close. Even though the "K3b" topic is resolved, it got me to install ALSA, which began a new "internal" thread in that topic, and the "Shopping List" topic was started because now that I have ALSA running, I now get static, or noise, introduced into my audio recordings.

I am sure you will also get a response within this topic, but, it can't hurt to see what "you" might be getting yourself into :D Among the many who helped me, get where I am now, are frequently assisting on these topics, those in particular where: Stephen, Windos_No_Thanks, Fingers99, and Markus -=- as for my issues, if you get ALSA running, and you can record an audio source, and when playing it back, you don't have introduced noise (static), I would be interested in seeing what was done - not to mention, I will be watching this thread/topic, as well, to see the progress :D

Good Luck, and hope yours doesn't go as bad as mine,
Cuddles

[JockVSJock]

apt-get the following:

1. alsa-modules
2. alsa-base
3. alsa-utils

re-ran the script under /etc/init.d/alsa-autoconfig and then I tried to start ./alsa from that directory, and get this error message:

root@xanadu:/etc/init.d# ./alsa start
Starting ALSA sound driver (version 0.9.2): no sound cards defined.

I run sndconfig, and it finds the card, a SB Live! Emu10000

Then the modules for the card, emu10k1.o is not in my module search path.

BUT, if I do the following:

lsmod | grep emu*
root@xanadu:/etc/init.d# lsmod | grep emu*

emu10k1 61064 1
sound 55244 0 [emu10k1]
ac97_codec 11884 0 [emu10k1]
soundcore 3428 7 [emu10k1 sound]
emu10k1-gp 1224 0 (unused)
gameport 1388 0 [emu10k1-gp]


Very odd, looks like that module is loaded for the kernel, right?

thanks

[Stephen]

apt-get the following:

1. alsa-modules
2. alsa-base
3. alsa-utils

re-ran the script under /etc/init.d/alsa-autoconfig and then I tried to start ./alsa from that directory, and get this error message:

root@xanadu:/etc/init.d# ./alsa start
Starting ALSA sound driver (version 0.9.2): no sound cards defined.

I run sndconfig, and it finds the card, a SB Live! Emu10000

Then the modules for the card, emu10k1.o is not in my module search path.

BUT, if I do the following:

lsmod | grep emu*
root@xanadu:/etc/init.d# lsmod | grep emu*

emu10k1 61064 1
sound 55244 0 [emu10k1]
ac97_codec 11884 0 [emu10k1]
soundcore 3428 7 [emu10k1 sound]
emu10k1-gp 1224 0 (unused)
gameport 1388 0 [emu10k1-gp]


Very odd, looks like that module is loaded for the kernel, right?

thanks

Those are the OSS modules that are loaded you should remove them from /etc/modules. It looks like somehow the configuration file did not get created what version of alsa do you have installed? Here is what my /etc/alsa/modutils/1.0 file looks like.


>$ cat /etc/alsa/modutils/1.0
### DEBCONF MAGIC
# This file was automatically generated by alsa-base's debconf stuff

alias char-major-116 snd
alias char-major-14 soundcore

options snd major=116 cards_limit=4

alias sound-service-0-0 snd-mixer-oss
alias sound-service-0-1 snd-seq-oss
alias sound-service-0-3 snd-pcm-oss
alias sound-service-0-8 snd-seq-oss
alias sound-service-0-12 snd-pcm-oss
alias /dev/dsp* snd-pcm-oss

alias snd-card-0 snd-emu10k1

alias snd-slot-0 snd-card-0
alias sound-slot-0 snd-slot-0


The file /etc/modutils/alsa is a symbolic link to the above file.


>$ ll /etc/modutils/alsa
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 22 2004-03-06 23:41 /etc/modutils/alsa -> /etc/alsa/modutils/1.0


What the modules loaded look like.


>$ lsmod
Module Size Used by
snd_pcm_oss 48580 0
snd_mixer_oss 15936 2 snd_pcm_oss
nvidia 2070376 12
apm 15268 2
snd_emu10k1 63172 1
snd_rawmidi 19648 1 snd_emu10k1
snd_pcm 83520 2 snd_pcm_oss,snd_emu10k1
snd_timer 20928 1 snd_pcm
snd_seq_device 6596 2 snd_emu10k1,snd_rawmidi
snd_ac97_codec 54724 1 snd_emu10k1
snd_page_alloc 9540 2 snd_emu10k1,snd_pcm
snd_util_mem 3456 1 snd_emu10k1
snd_hwdep 7296 1 snd_emu10k1
snd 46468 10 snd_pcm_oss,snd_mixer_oss,snd_emu10k1,snd_rawmidi, snd_pcm,snd_timer,snd_seq_device,snd_ac97_codec,sn d_util_mem,snd_hwdep
uhci_hcd 28616 0
ohci_hcd 15936 0
ehci_hcd 21888 0
evdev 8256 0
via686a 17028 0
i2c_sensor 2496 1 via686a
i2c_isa 1984 0
i2c_core 18304 3 via686a,i2c_sensor,i2c_isa
nls_iso8859_15 4608 0
sidewinder 10496 0
emu10k1_gp 2496 0
joydev 9152 0
gameport 3840 2 sidewinder,emu10k1_gp
sound 75496 0
soundcore 7584 3 snd,sound
parport_pc 25740 1
lp 8964 0
parport 36864 2 parport_pc,lp
tulip 38368 0
crc32 4096 1 tulip


You should check the configuration files to see if they are correct and after making any changes in the files run update-modules for the new information to be entered into the /etc/modules.conf for use on the next boot or loading of the modules.

[JockVSJock]

My /etc/alsa/modutils/

has nothing under it.

This is what is in that directory



root@xanadu:/etc/alsa# ls -a
. .. 0.9 alsa-base.conf modutils



Not really sure where to progress from here.

thanks