Sound suddenly stopped working

cptnwinky · 2008-01-13 04:36:07

I have been searching for answers and struggling with this for about three days now. I've tried as many keyword combos as I can possibly think of on this forum and no problem seems to be just like mine.

3 days ago I decided to open up my case and clean out all the dust (sound worked fine before shutting down, no updates before shutting down). I removed my karajan sound module (the motherboard is a DFI UT NF4 SLI-DR) which uses the ac97 codec to dust out underneath it. I also switched my RAM from slots 1-3 to 2-4 as I read somewhere that Samsung UCCC RAM might run better in those slots (whatever that might mean, I'm no expert, just wanted to experiment and see what happens).

After booting back up I entered the BIOS and began slightly modifying settings. I turned off certain things that were never used such as the onboard irda port, FDC controller, extra 1394IEEE port, etc. I was trying to save some power so that I could slightly overclock the FSB, CPU VID and DRAM. By slight I mean incrementing only by one point each (I'm new to overclocking and didn't want to damage anything). I am positive I did not turn off the ac97 onboard sound though and have since verified that to be thorough.

Save and reset, boot into Arch as normal, go about my business and open Amarok to play some MP3's and much to my surprise I have no sound output. So I tried to enable every device (or whatever it is called) in the mixer program (sorry that I can't remember all the names of these programs, I am using gnome if that helps) and turn them all the way up, nothing. Next I plugged my speakers into my wifes laptop to ensure the speakers were not the problem, indeed they were not. I tried reinstalling alsa, alsa-libs and alsa-utils to no avail.

I next shut down and tried to re-seat the sound card module to ensure a proper connection. Still no sound. Now this whole time my sound card is recognized and modules loaded so I'm fairly positive I did not damage the card in some way (at least I hope not).

Now I am at my whits end. I can't understand why I have no sound so I am issuing this plea to all that can read this; please, if you can think of anything I missed or simply just don't know about I beg you to help me.

aRcHaTe · 2008-01-13 04:44:21

look calml again on bios...cables..daemons..alsamixer

cptnwinky · 2008-01-13 05:25:29

Just restarted and set the bios back to optimized defaults. The only cables are between the speakers and the sound card, those are fine. I am going to list as much info as I can think of here...

Result of lsmod|grep snd

snd_seq_oss            29312  0 
snd_seq_midi_event      6528  1 snd_seq_oss
snd_seq                46800  4 snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_midi_event
snd_seq_device          6924  2 snd_seq_oss,snd_seq
snd_intel8x0           28700  1 
snd_ac97_codec         95268  1 snd_intel8x0
snd_pcm_oss            36896  0 
snd_pcm                68868  3 snd_intel8x0,snd_ac97_codec,snd_pcm_oss
snd_timer              19332  2 snd_seq,snd_pcm
snd_page_alloc          8072  2 snd_intel8x0,snd_pcm
snd_mixer_oss          14464  1 snd_pcm_oss
snd                    45220  11 snd_seq_oss,snd_seq,snd_seq_device,snd_intel8x0,snd_ac97_codec,snd_pcm_oss,snd_pcm,snd_timer,snd_mixer_oss
soundcore               6496  1 snd
ac97_bus                2432  1 snd_ac97_codec

Result of ls -l /dev/snd

total 0
crw-rw---- 1 root audio 116,  0 2008-01-12 19:06 controlC0
crw-rw---- 1 root audio 116, 24 2008-01-12 19:06 pcmC0D0c
crw-rw---- 1 root audio 116, 16 2008-01-12 19:06 pcmC0D0p
crw-rw---- 1 root audio 116, 25 2008-01-12 19:06 pcmC0D1c
crw-rw---- 1 root audio 116, 18 2008-01-12 19:06 pcmC0D2p
crw-rw---- 1 root audio 116,  1 2008-01-12 19:06 seq
crw-rw---- 1 root audio 116, 33 2008-01-12 19:06 timer

Output of groups

wheel hal network audio optical storage users abs

Output of ps -A

  PID TTY          TIME CMD
    1 ?        00:00:00 init
    2 ?        00:00:00 kthreadd
    3 ?        00:00:00 migration/0
    4 ?        00:00:00 ksoftirqd/0
    5 ?        00:00:00 watchdog/0
    6 ?        00:00:00 migration/1
    7 ?        00:00:00 ksoftirqd/1
    8 ?        00:00:00 watchdog/1
    9 ?        00:00:00 events/0
   10 ?        00:00:00 events/1
   11 ?        00:00:00 khelper
   47 ?        00:00:00 kblockd/0
   48 ?        00:00:00 kblockd/1
   51 ?        00:00:00 kacpid
   52 ?        00:00:00 kacpi_notify
  198 ?        00:00:00 kseriod
  236 ?        00:00:00 pdflush
  237 ?        00:00:00 pdflush
  238 ?        00:00:00 kswapd0
  291 ?        00:00:00 aio/0
  292 ?        00:00:00 aio/1
  383 ?        00:00:00 khvcd
  446 ?        00:00:00 rpciod/0
  447 ?        00:00:00 rpciod/1
  458 ?        00:00:00 ata/0
  459 ?        00:00:00 ata/1
  460 ?        00:00:00 ata_aux
  465 ?        00:00:00 scsi_eh_0
  467 ?        00:00:00 scsi_eh_1
  485 ?        00:00:00 scsi_eh_2
  487 ?        00:00:00 scsi_eh_3
  492 ?        00:00:00 scsi_eh_4
  494 ?        00:00:00 scsi_eh_5
  507 ?        00:00:00 scsi_eh_6
  509 ?        00:00:00 scsi_eh_7
  511 ?        00:00:00 scsi_eh_8
  513 ?        00:00:00 scsi_eh_9
  885 ?        00:00:00 ksuspend_usbd
  941 ?        00:00:00 khubd
 1880 ?        00:00:00 scsi_eh_10
 1881 ?        00:00:00 usb-storage
 1999 ?        00:00:00 kjournald
 2046 ?        00:00:00 udevd
 5628 ?        00:00:00 khpsbpkt
 6512 ?        00:00:00 irda_sir_wq
 6725 ?        00:00:00 kjournald
 6747 ?        00:00:00 reiserfs/0
 6748 ?        00:00:00 reiserfs/1
 6749 ?        00:00:00 kjournald
 7052 ?        00:00:00 portmap
 7055 ?        00:00:00 famd
 7064 ?        00:00:00 dbus-daemon
 7072 ?        00:00:00 hald
 7073 ?        00:00:00 hald-runner
 7085 ?        00:00:00 hald-addon-inpu
 7088 ?        00:00:00 hald-addon-acpi
 7100 ?        00:00:00 hald-addon-stor
 7103 ?        00:00:00 hald-addon-stor
 7112 ?        00:00:00 syslog-ng
 7127 ?        00:00:00 dhcpcd
 7145 ?        00:00:00 rpc.statd
 7161 ?        00:00:00 rpc.mountd
 7164 ?        00:00:00 lockd
 7166 ?        00:00:00 nfsd4
 7167 ?        00:00:00 nfsd
 7168 ?        00:00:00 nfsd
 7169 ?        00:00:00 nfsd
 7170 ?        00:00:00 nfsd
 7171 ?        00:00:00 nfsd
 7172 ?        00:00:00 nfsd
 7173 ?        00:00:00 nfsd
 7174 ?        00:00:00 nfsd
 7195 ?        00:00:00 mysqld_safe
 7222 ?        00:00:00 mysqld
 7240 ?        00:00:00 crond
 7256 ?        00:00:00 gdm-binary
 7259 ?        00:00:00 gdm-binary
 7261 tty1     00:00:00 agetty
 7262 tty2     00:00:00 agetty
 7263 tty3     00:00:00 agetty
 7264 tty4     00:00:00 agetty
 7265 tty5     00:00:00 agetty
 7266 tty6     00:00:00 agetty
 7277 tty7     00:00:13 Xorg
 7305 ?        00:00:00 gnome-session
 7323 ?        00:00:00 ssh-agent
 7325 ?        00:00:00 gconfd-2
 7328 ?        00:00:00 gnome-keyring-d
 7330 ?        00:00:00 dbus-daemon
 7332 ?        00:00:00 gnome-settings-
 7341 ?        00:00:00 gnome-panel
 7343 ?        00:00:01 nautilus
 7345 ?        00:00:00 bonobo-activati
 7347 ?        00:00:00 pidgin
 7352 ?        00:00:00 gnome-vfs-daemo
 7356 ?        00:00:00 fusion-icon
 7360 ?        00:00:00 gnome-volume-ma
 7371 ?        00:00:00 wnck-applet
 7377 ?        00:00:00 notification-ar
 7380 ?        00:00:00 mixer_applet2
 7394 ?        00:00:00 mapping-daemon
 7429 ?        00:00:00 clock-applet
 7430 ?        00:00:05 compiz
 7432 ?        00:00:00 emerald
 7459 ?        00:00:00 firefox
 7463 ?        00:00:00 run-mozilla.sh
 7468 ?        00:00:24 firefox-bin
 7499 ?        00:00:01 gnome-terminal
 7501 ?        00:00:00 gnome-pty-helpe
 7502 pts/0    00:00:00 bash
 7531 pts/0    00:00:00 ps

alsamixer has every single channel unmuted and all the way up.

Still, no sound. Thanks for responding.

aRcHaTe · 2008-01-13 06:21:30

> lsmod|grep snd
snd_usb_audio 76512 0
snd_usb_lib 15104 1 snd_usb_audio
snd_rawmidi 19232 1 snd_usb_lib
snd_hda_intel 295456 2
snd_hwdep 7300 2 snd_usb_audio,snd_hda_intel
snd_seq_oss 29312 0
snd_seq_midi_event 6528 1 snd_seq_oss
snd_seq 46800 4 snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_midi_event
snd_seq_device 6924 3 snd_rawmidi,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq
snd_pcm_oss 36896 0
snd_pcm 68868 4 snd_usb_audio,snd_hda_intel,snd_pcm_oss
snd_timer 19332 2 snd_seq,snd_pcm
snd_page_alloc 8072 2 snd_hda_intel,snd_pcm
snd_mixer_oss 14464 1 snd_pcm_oss
snd 45220 14 snd_usb_audio,snd_rawmidi,snd_hda_intel,snd_hwdep,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq,snd_seq_device,snd_pcm_oss,snd_pcm,snd_timer,snd_mixer_oss
soundcore 6496 1 snd
usbcore 122504 12 ohci_hcd,quickcam,quickcam_messenger,usbvideo,hci_usb,usbhid,usb_storage,snd_usb_audio,snd_usb_lib,ehci_hcd,uhci_hcd

total 0
crw-rw---- 1 root audio 116, 0 2008-01-13 05:12 controlC0
crw-rw---- 1 root audio 116, 32 2008-01-13 05:12 controlC1
crw-rw---- 1 root audio 116, 4 2008-01-13 05:12 hwC0D0
crw-rw---- 1 root audio 116, 24 2008-01-13 05:12 pcmC0D0c
crw-rw---- 1 root audio 116, 16 2008-01-13 05:12 pcmC0D0p
crw-rw---- 1 root audio 116, 17 2008-01-13 05:12 pcmC0D1p
crw-rw---- 1 root audio 116, 56 2008-01-13 05:12 pcmC1D0c
crw-rw---- 1 root audio 116, 1 2008-01-13 05:12 seq
crw-rw---- 1 root audio 116, 33 2008-01-13 05:12 timer

Look into the loaded modules on rc.conf

cptnwinky · 2008-01-13 06:28:48

Thanks for your help thus far. If it's not completely obvious yet I am still fairly used to all the extra fancy gui tools provided by other distributions. I haven't touched rc.conf in quite a while and I'm not sure what exactly is supposed to be loaded for sound...

#
# -----------------------------------------------------------------------
# DAEMONS
# -----------------------------------------------------------------------
#
# Daemons to start at boot-up (in this order)
#   - prefix a daemon with a ! to disable it
#   - prefix a daemon with a @ to start it up in the background
#
DAEMONS=(fam dbus hal syslog-ng network portmap nfslock nfsd netfs mysqld crond gdm)

aRcHaTe · 2008-01-13 15:38:17

well...to have sound you have to load at least one driver...and you dont have any loading

http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/ALSA

i use this one..but there are other you can use...read it well and if you have questions ask again..

cptnwinky · 2008-01-13 16:03:27

Oop, I just realized you had said the modules section, not the daemons, sorry....

#
# -----------------------------------------------------------------------
# HARDWARE
# -----------------------------------------------------------------------
#
# Scan hardware and load required modules at bootup
MOD_AUTOLOAD="yes"
# Module Blacklist - modules in this list will never be loaded by udev
MOD_BLACKLIST=()
#
# Modules to load at boot-up (in this order)
#   - prefix a module with a ! to blacklist it
#
MODULES=(forcedeth sk98lin skge slhc ac97_bus snd-mixer-oss snd-pcm-oss snd-page-alloc snd-pcm snd-timer snd snd-ac97-codec snd-intel8x0 soundcore)

I had not modified this before or after this problem. Regardless, still no sound. I think I might try a fresh install today anyways as I want to install kdemod4 from a fresh state without gnome already in place. If a fresh install does not restore sound then I can only imagine I damaged my sound card in some way.

aRcHaTe · 2008-01-13 16:14:23

try adding alsa to daemons...and looking at alsamixer

cptnwinky · 2008-01-13 20:22:38

Ok, I finally got it but I'm still not sure what happened. After a fresh install, with KDE (couldn't get kdemod4 to work properly)......

Before I was controlling all my sound through channels master and pcm. Now in order to get sound working I had to enable duplicate front, surround, center and LFE. So, now my master channel does absolutely nothing, I have surround, center and LFE all the way up and control my volume through the PCM channel.

This is just so bizarre because I changed nothing before taking my sound card out and putting it back in. I'm sure there must have been something stupid I did at some point but it's really beyond me at the moment.

Thanks for all your help though, I highly appreciate it.

Arch Linux

#1 2008-01-13 04:36:07

Sound suddenly stopped working

#2 2008-01-13 04:44:21

Re: Sound suddenly stopped working

#3 2008-01-13 05:25:29

Re: Sound suddenly stopped working

#4 2008-01-13 06:21:30

Re: Sound suddenly stopped working

#5 2008-01-13 06:28:48

Re: Sound suddenly stopped working

#6 2008-01-13 15:38:17

Re: Sound suddenly stopped working

#7 2008-01-13 16:03:27

Re: Sound suddenly stopped working

#8 2008-01-13 16:14:23

Re: Sound suddenly stopped working

#9 2008-01-13 20:22:38

Re: Sound suddenly stopped working

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