Arch Linux

maxie

Member

Registered: 2010-12-25

Posts: 18

ALSA not working, OSS does works

Hello,

since a few days my alsa seems to have a problem.

I get sound by oss but not by alsa anymore.

Output of

# /etc/rc.d/alsa start

:: Restoring ALSA Levels                                                 [BUSY]
/usr/sbin/alsactl: load_state:1625: No soundcards found...

But it seems like the sound card is detected.

# lspci |grep Audio

00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset High Definition Audio (rev 06)
01:00.1 Audio device: nVidia Corporation High Definition Audio Controller (rev a1)

Does anybody have an idea?

Thanks in advance.

Maxie

Last edited by maxie (2011-08-17 18:06:35)

Radioactiveman

Member

From: Germany

Registered: 2010-05-13

Posts: 388

Re: ALSA not working, OSS does works

Post the output of

lsmod | grep snd

maxie

Member

Registered: 2010-12-25

Posts: 18

Re: ALSA not working, OSS does works

Output is empty.

Last edited by maxie (2011-08-17 18:07:26)

shulamy

Member

From: israel

Registered: 2010-09-11

Posts: 456

Re: ALSA not working, OSS does works

i think you have to be root for that.

ezik

Radioactiveman

Member

From: Germany

Registered: 2010-05-13

Posts: 388

Re: ALSA not working, OSS does works

No, you don't have to.
Anyway, this means the sound modules aren't loaded.
I experienced the same behaviour some weeks ago. For me reinstalling the kernel helped, but I don't know what was wrong.

karol

Archivist

Registered: 2009-05-06

Posts: 25,440

Re: ALSA not working, OSS does works

Post the output of

ls -1 /etc/modprobe.d/

What's the output of 'uname -r' and 'pacman -Q linux'?
Is your user in the 'audio' group'?

Last edited by karol (2011-08-20 10:01:48)

brebs

Member

Registered: 2007-04-03

Posts: 3,742

Re: ALSA not working, OSS does works

I get sound by oss but not by alsa anymore.

You should clarify that. Do you mean ALSA's emulation of OSS (which bypasses dmix)?

If yes, an app which opens OSS sound will block ALSA. ALSA *cannot* play via OSS & ALSA simultaneously.

This is a useful debugging command:

fuser -fv /dev/snd/* /dev/dsp*

It would be more useful, and far less tedious, to provide lots of information in one post, rather than drip-feeding it:

wget -O alsa-info.sh http://www.alsa-project.org/alsa-info.sh
bash alsa-info.sh --upload

Then show us the URL that the script shows at the end.

Włóczymyśl

Member

From: Poland, Szczecin

Registered: 2011-03-17

Posts: 57

Website

Re: ALSA not working, OSS does works

I get sound by oss but not by alsa anymore.

Isn't ALSA auto-removed during installation of OSS?

karol

Archivist

Registered: 2009-05-06

Posts: 25,440

Re: ALSA not working, OSS does works

I get sound by oss but not by alsa anymore.

Isn't ALSA auto-removed during installation of OSS?

Nooo, and you even have http://www.archlinux.org/packages/extra/i686/alsa-oss/

brebs

Member

Registered: 2007-04-03

Posts: 3,742

Re: ALSA not working, OSS does works

Nooo, and you even have http://www.archlinux.org/packages/extra/i686/alsa-oss/

Two things:

The URL you pointed to is ALSA's emulation of OSS, rather than OpenSound. Which bypasses dmix.

Notice I use the word OpenSound to reduce confusion, and its own installer *removes* ALSA's kernel modules, last time I tried it (many months ago).

Gusar

Member

Registered: 2009-08-25

Posts: 3,605

Re: ALSA not working, OSS does works

Nooo, and you even have http://www.archlinux.org/packages/extra/i686/alsa-oss/

Two things:

The URL you pointed to is ALSA's emulation of OSS, rather than OpenSound. Which bypasses dmix.

Incorrect. alsa-oss is a userspace library that inject itself before running an app. It is dmixed. What is not dmixed is alsa's kernel-level oss emulation (the snd-pcm-oss module).

Last edited by Gusar (2011-08-24 15:04:59)

brebs

Member

Registered: 2007-04-03

Posts: 3,742

Re: ALSA not working, OSS does works

Great, so now we have 3 types of opensound

Does alsa-oss i.e.  actually *work*, i.e.

aoss ossplayer

With dmix (i.e. concurrectly with proper dmixed ALSA), for anyone?

I assume fuser -fv /dev/snd/* /dev/dsp* would show 2 in snd/ and nothing in dsp/

Earnestly

Member

Registered: 2011-08-18

Posts: 805

Re: ALSA not working, OSS does works

This might have something to do with the asynchronous loading of modules. I had the same issue of snd_usb_audio loading before snd_hda_intel and on some occasions my soundcard wasn't detected at all.

Have you tried

aplay -l

And if so, what are the contents?

---

If this is similar to your problem you can order the loading of specific modules by editing your /etc/modprobe.d/modprobe.conf file and adding:

options snd_hda_intel index=0
options snd_usb_audio index=1

Gusar

Member

Registered: 2009-08-25

Posts: 3,605

Re: ALSA not working, OSS does works

Great, so now we have 3 types of opensound

Now? alsa-oss has been around since alsa existed. It's problem is though that it doesn't work for some apps. So people tend to use the in-kernel emulation (in the few cases where it's still necessary, which is actually rare nowadays). There is another method that came around recently, CUSE and ossp. Haven't tried that one yet.

Last edited by Gusar (2011-08-24 17:03:55)

brebs

Member

Registered: 2007-04-03

Posts: 3,742

Re: ALSA not working, OSS does works

Does alsa-oss i.e.  actually *work*

Yes, with doom3 output via aoss, with "speaker-test" running - both outputs are via /dev/pcm/

Has a noticeable delay, though. But it actually works., which is better than ALA's dmix.

Gusar

Member

Registered: 2009-08-25

Posts: 3,605

Re: ALSA not working, OSS does works

But it actually works., which is better than ALA's dmix.

Dmix has worked for me for years. And has so for many, many others.

brebs

Member

Registered: 2007-04-03

Posts: 3,742

Re: ALSA not working, OSS does works

Come on, I know this already. There are some weird problems with dmix, for people with more than 2 speakers.

Edit: Also, what I said was in the context of Doom3.

Last edited by brebs (2011-08-24 19:35:30)