Arch Linux

friday

Member

Registered: 2007-11-12

Posts: 2

Alsa problem - no sound and no errors

My brand new Arch system just has one little issue left to solve. I followed the wiki page to setup ALSA, but for the life of me I can't seem to get the box to make a sound. Everything looks like it should be working fine, channels unmuted, no errors on boot, all modules loaded, etc. XMMS gets a signal of some sort (the EQ graphic is moving) but no sound comes out. All users are in the audio group, and the problem is the same for root.

Right now I'm unsure as to whether alsa starts at all - it's listed in daemons in /etc/rc.conf, but I can't find it in the process list. No error messages related to alsa, sound or snd can be found in the logs.

So...what am I missing?

lspci output:

#lspci | grep audio
00:11.5 Multimedia audio controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8233/A/8235/8237 AC97 Audio Controller (rev 60)

lsmod output:

#lsmod | grep '^snd'
snd_via82xx            27048  3 
snd_ac97_codec        117592  1 snd_via82xx
snd_mpu401_uart         8448  1 snd_via82xx
snd_rawmidi            23328  1 snd_mpu401_uart
snd_seq_oss            32896  0 
snd_seq_midi_event      7936  1 snd_seq_oss
snd_seq                55680  4 snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_midi_event
snd_seq_device          7956  3 snd_rawmidi,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq
snd_pcm_oss            42144  0 
snd_pcm                82184  4 snd_via82xx,snd_ac97_codec,snd_pcm_oss
snd_timer              22792  2 snd_seq,snd_pcm
snd_page_alloc          9104  2 snd_via82xx,snd_pcm
snd_mixer_oss          17024  1 snd_pcm_oss
snd                    57192  16 snd_via82xx,snd_ac97_codec,snd_mpu401_uart,snd_rawmidi,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq,snd_seq_device,snd_pcm_oss,snd_pcm,snd_timer,snd_mixer_oss

Devices in /dev/snd/:

# ls -l /dev/snd/
totalt 0
crw-rw---- 1 root audio 116,  0 12 nov 11.12 controlC0
crw-rw---- 1 root audio 116, 24 12 nov 11.12 pcmC0D0c
crw-rw---- 1 root audio 116, 16 12 nov 11.12 pcmC0D0p
crw-rw---- 1 root audio 116, 25 12 nov 11.12 pcmC0D1c
crw-rw---- 1 root audio 116, 17 12 nov 11.12 pcmC0D1p
crw-rw---- 1 root audio 116,  1 12 nov 11.12 seq
crw-rw---- 1 root audio 116, 33 12 nov 11.12 timer

/etc/modprobe.conf:

options snd-via82xx ac97_quirk=0

In accordance with the instructions on the wiki ALSA-page.

Any hints appreciated, can't wait to watch movies w/ sound again :-)

yorugua

Member

Registered: 2007-11-12

Posts: 2

Re: Alsa problem - no sound and no errors

I'm probably of not much help but I notice that I have your same hardware and the sound works great on my system.
My /etc/modprobe.conf is completely blank,so you might wanna try that.

lilsirecho

Veteran

Registered: 2003-10-24

Posts: 5,000

Re: Alsa problem - no sound and no errors

Check alsa mixer...it may be muted!

---

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liquibyte

Member

Registered: 2007-11-11

Posts: 91

Website

Re: Alsa problem - no sound and no errors

I had the same problem. This post solved it for me:

http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=39350

In other words, is your user part of the audio group?

gpasswd -a USERNAME audio

sveinemann

Member

Registered: 2007-09-30

Posts: 108

Re: Alsa problem - no sound and no errors

Its easy to forget to add youre user to the right groups, if you want cd/dvd, automount of partitions and direct rendering add this youre user to these groups: optical storage video

friday

Member

Registered: 2007-11-12

Posts: 2

Re: Alsa problem - no sound and no errors

I'm probably of not much help but I notice that I have your same hardware and the sound works great on my system.

At the very least, it's encouraging

Thanks for all your suggestions. I have double-checked group memberships and alsamixer levels once again, and everything is at it should be - i.e. my user is a member of the audio, video, storage and optical groups, and I even threw in hal and dbus for good measure and rebooted - to no avail.
All channels are unmuted in alsamixer, all levels are set to around 50%.

Does anyone know what the alsa process looks like in a ps aux listing? I can't seem to find it, which has made me start to suspect that it's not starting correctly. Although why I don't see any error mesasges anywhere I have no idea.

bwayne

Member

Registered: 2007-11-07

Posts: 20

Re: Alsa problem - no sound and no errors

The wiki explicitly states

NEVER use alsaconf if you have a PCI or ISAPNP sound card, as the entries alsaconf adds to the modprobe.conf file might break udev's autodetection.(emphasis added)

but running alsaconf was what it took for me. 

I was in your shoes.  Did everything, still nothing.  It was worth re-installing if I borked anything, in my mind, so I just ran alsaconf and here I am, enjoying my last.fm. 

Last edited by bwayne (2007-11-14 05:48:09)