Opensuse 10.2 no sound as user but sound as root

[frimann]

I have a laptop HP/Compaq NX9005 with a integrated soundcard who uses snd_ali5451 module, yast sets up the soundcard and plays a test sound but after that no mixer found , and similar errors as user, (the module is loaded) i just had the idea to log in as root and sound is working fine as root so it has to have something to do with permissions, sound has been working fine on this laptop for almost 2 years under linux so this must be a bug in suse 10.2. Im inpatient so how do i blast sound permissions :rolleyes:

[psych-major]

chmod 777 /dev/mixer
chmod 777 /dev/mixer0
chmod 777 /dev/dsp
chmod 777 /etc/rc.d/rc.alsa
chmod -R 777 /dev/snd
chmod -R 777 /dev/soundshould be enough to get you jammin'

[frimann]

Thanks a lot it worked

[psych-major]

Enjoy those tunes!

[bwkaz]

/me shakes his head...

chmod 777 /dev/mixer No, no, PLEASE no!

777 is NOT appropriate for ANY device file. That means that any random user can go try to execute the mixer device (or mixer0, or dsp); at best they'll get an "invalid file format", and at worst they'll start running microphone input as if it was a binary. This is obviously wrong.

What you might want is 0666 instead of 0777 -- that way it's readable and writable by all users. What you very likely want is 0660, which is probably what it was, and make yourself a member of the "sound" group, so you have permission. Find your distro's group membership management tool and add yourself to the sound group. (Or go find the group name of the dsp device and make yourself a member of that group, but every distro I've ever seen uses sound for the group.)

chmod 777 /etc/rc.d/rc.alsa If this isn't already executable, destroying the permissions like this isn't going to help anything...

chmod -R 777 /dev/snd And you DO NOT want all your Alsa devices executable! You CERTAINLY don't want anyone other than root to be able to create and remove files in there. The default 0755 should be fine for the directory, and the default 0660/root/sound should be fine for all the contained devices. (Same with /dev/sound.)

In short: The shotgun approach is NOT GOOD! (Besides, if this distro uses udev, the changes will be lost the next time you boot. Much better to figure out how your distro is trying to set up sound, and work with that.)

[psych-major]

Bwkaz is right, his solutions is correct, and permanent!

[frimann]

i did a reboot and sound is still working, i am willing to reinstall and do this again to do this right (help others and this is only 2hours old install) i know little about permisions but this is a single user system.

[psych-major]

no need to reinstall, just set to 666 and 755, as per bwkaz's post.

[frimann]

did so all still working :)

[psych-major]

This will net bwkaz another vote or 2 on the moderator of the month (http://www.justlinux.com/forum/showthread.php?threadid=147770) poll!

[frimann]

I woted for him

[clw54]

When you get the sound as root but not user problem, it's usually because the user has to be part of a group.

[bwkaz]

When you get the sound as root but not user problem, it's usually because the user has to be part of a group. Yep, usually, though it's possible that the issue might be something else. It depends on the file's permission bits, UID, and GID -- and these can be double checked with "ls -l".

With sound devices, the UID is almost always 0 (root), the GID is almost always some number that corresponds to "audio", and the permission bits are almost always 0660 (owner has read/write, group has read/write, others have no permissions).

[psych-major]

yep, just checked mine, /dev/mixer belongs to the group 'audio'

[bwkaz]

Heh, oops. I wrote "sound" when I should have written "audio". Thanks. :)

[frimann]

I was in the audio group,it was the first thing i checked.
I installed Suse 10.2 again on another partition on this laptop and this time sound came on after reboot, so i will now never know exactly what it was.
This bothers me a bit now, i should not have been so hasty.

[frimann]

I know more now, kubuntu live cd gives som errors starting up about hardware adresses ALI15X3 not dected, tells me to update bios.
But sound did work when it started up and allso is working in suse.


http://picasaweb.google.com/frimannj/Fartolva

[bwkaz]

ali15x3? Sounds like you might have the same motherboard chipset as I do. ;)

(Was it i2c-ali15x3? That's only related to reading EEPROM values out of your memory, or reading temperature/voltage values out of the SuperIO chip hanging off the motherboard's south bridge. It shouldn't affect sound, but I don't know that for sure.)

[frimann]

more info was in the link at the bottom, it mensions "AC'97 acsess not valid ....
ali mixer creating error...
So AC´97 and mixer in the same message must mean sound!
:)
Im quite relaxed about this now that i know what is going on, unless i dont, the hardware is burning out or the kernel is dropping support or im silly or cant sleep to night over this ....... :p

[bwkaz]

Oh, I get it. :)

You were getting multiple errors there. The first was these two lines:

ali15x3_smbus 0000:00:11.0: ALI15X3_smb region uninitialized - upgrade BIOS or use force_addr=0xaddr
ali15x3_smbus 0000:00:11.0: ALI15X3 not detected, module not inserted That's the i2c-ali15x3 module, which is there to let you read your RAM's EEPROM SPD data. I think it's also supposed to allow reading sensor data, but I'm not sure whether it worked or not. I seem to remember some issue with it; either it didn't show any sensors at all, or it did show sensors but it locked the machine up fairly often with my motherboard. (Actually, that may have been the ali1563 driver, not the 15x3 one. Hmm...) Anyway, it's supposed to read sensor data.

The next error, talking about the AC'97 invalid access, and the ALI mixer device, has the feel of a driver problem, but I don't know for sure.

[gonzoman]

Dear everybody,
I have run into the same problem. Im using ubuntu 6.10 and when loggin in as root (recovery mode) sound and multimedia work like a charm. When loggin as a normal user nothing. Im pretty sure is a matter of permits. Ive tried so far the suggestion before mentioned but it works partially, I can access the sound manager levers but no sound, besides on the next reboot permits fall back to its original status. Ive tried adding the user to audio group but in doing so this prevents the user loggin with the X. Im using gnome. I ve tried as well runing alsamixer and remove anything that is not necessary. I think I will try to download and install kde, but if you have any suggestion will be welcome. Ive been trying to solve this for a number of days without success.
Regards.