Arch Linux

Gremnon

Member

From: UK

Registered: 2010-03-12

Posts: 43

ALSA and Gnome issues

One Arch newbie, but long time *nixer, trying to figure out a pair or plaguing problems.

Arch finally got a hold of me and persuaded me to install it, which has gone fine, thanks to the Wiki's excellent Beginner's guide.
As usual, because I have a separate /home partition to store my stuff in between distros, I installed Gnome and Openbox, intending to use Openbox to install (and sometimes compile) whatever's needed so when I log into a Gnome session, there's no errors or complaints. It's never failed me before.
Along the way though, I've hit two stubborn pests that refuse to be solved.
One reared it's head just before the DE/WM install stage, in the form or ALSA - It appears to recognise my soundcard, and even claimed to be playing a sound, but I hear silence (though the parents probably prefer it to my music, but that's another story.)
The other distro on this computer, a Fedora 12 install, has no issues at all playing sound, which leaves me to guess that either I missed something in the guide (Unlikely, as I ran through it twice more after the initial problem to make sure) or there's something strange going on.

The second problem came when I thought I'd reboot with GDM in the daemons list. Fair enough, you'd think, no trouble? No.
See, while installing everything that gets pulled in with 'pacman -S gnome gnome-extra' I got a lot of errors after many packages that almost always show this:

/usr/sbin/gconfpkg: line 10: 3337 Segmentation fault GCONF_CONFIG_SOURCE='/usr/bin/gconftool-2 --get-default-source' /usr/bin/gconftool-2 --makefile-install-rule /usr/share/gconf/schemas/${pkgname}.schemas > /dev/null

This means, unfortunatly, very little to me, but given that when GDM launched, I was left with a grey screen, a black cursor, and a little notification telling me that the Gnome power manager hadn't installed correctly. And then it did nothing except let me move the mouse around, responding to nothing else.
I used Fedora to remove GDM from the daemons again so I could get a command line back, and then back in Arch tried reinstalling gnome and gnome-extra, only to recieve the GConf errors again, which makes me think it's something to do with that.

These two problems are the only ones I have right now, and are the only ones stopping me from really enjoying Arch. Failing all else, I could try and use something other than Gnome, but A: that wouldn't really fix the ALSA problem, and B: I've got a fair few things that only seem to work in Gnome. To each their own, I guess.

Now, I figure I've rambled enough... what say you, the Arch community on my plight?

3])

Member

From: Netherlands

Registered: 2009-10-12

Posts: 215

Re: ALSA and Gnome issues

Check "alsamixer" and see if you have unmuted the Master section.
Just press M, then try to play a sound using aplay or equivelant.

If that doesn't work, make sure that PCM is above 50% or so to be able to hear it.

Btw-you can still use "GNOME" applications in other desktop environments/window managers.
Check http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GNOME.
Arch wiki is your friend,and as I use Openbox I can't help you with the GNOME problem.

Last edited by 3]) (2010-03-13 10:17:00)

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“There are two ways of constructing a software design. One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies. And the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies.”-- C.A.R. Hoare

Gremnon

Member

From: UK

Registered: 2010-03-12

Posts: 43

Re: ALSA and Gnome issues

Thanks.
A little update, then.
Thanks to the LinuxQuestions.org forums, I managed to solve *most* of the Gnome things, as they helpfully pointed me to a bug filed on the Arch bucktracker (Somewhere I didn't think to look, I confess). This seems to have solved the problems, but GDM is still a pest. It now doesn't complain about the power manager, but instead just presents a luminous green screen, that seems to react only to the power button being pressed. Otherwise, it seems to be fine.

ALSA, on the other hand, I've checked the mixer - they're unmuted alright, the volume's up, and aplay still tells me it's playing, but I'm still hearing no sound. I even rechecked the hardware connection to be certain, but it looks like that's not the cause at all.

I did check the Gnome wiki page, btw, but it doesn't seem to have anything on GDM problems. At least, nothing that helped. Thanks anyway.