No sound

[redhatter]

Hi all,

I just now finished installing Red Hat 7.1. My first major upgrade! It went fairly well, there were a few problems setting up my networking files, but all in all it feels great.

One problem I'm having is that there is no sound. I put a cd in, and it recognizes the name of the cd (cool), then it shows that its playing. Meanwhile I hear nothing.

Perhaps there's a problem identifying the sound card? It worked fine with my old Mandrake distro. How can I see what the computer thinks my sound card is, and how can I change it to correct this problem?

I am running gnome, not kde, not sure that it matters.

Thanks! :)

[The King Ant]

If it's a normal audio CD (the kind you play in normal audio CDs), then that doesn't really have much to do with Software. The software is just an interface to tell the CD-ROM drive what to do. The actual audio is sent directly to the sound card over that thin little piece of crap gray cable (with 2 to 4 pins).

Er, so make sure that audio cable is plugged in. And your speakers are on and plugged in and everything.

Can you play wavs and stuff through your sound card?

[ 26 July 2001: Message edited by: The King Ant ]

[pbharris]

not to sound like a smart a** - but try turning up the volume using xmixer, gmix, or whatever. i killed two days compiling and recompling my kernel to get sound support. turns out all i needed to do was have the volume at an audible lvel.

[sincka]

Get

sndconfig

if that doesn't work then gimme some specs as to what the snd card is and then we'll get somewhere.

[redhatter]

Well, still no luck. I got sndconfig, and when it comes back with the ISAPNP probe results it shows: Model:CSC4235 PnP Audio Device:CTRL. This is definitely not my sound card. I have a SoundBlaster 256 Live card.

When I check out my box, it looks like there is another soundcard directly on the mother board. At least there is another set of holes for the speaker plug. Using these plugs yielded no results.

I tried playing around in the sndconfig utility, trying each possible SoundBlaster card and all possible combinations of the card settings.

I am still unable to hear sound when I play cd's, mp3's, and Realplayer.

Is the motherboard sound card causing some kind of confusion? Thats the best I can come up with.

Thanks!

[redhatter]

Ok. I've been playing around in the sndconfig sound configuration utility. It either (a) tells me it will play a sound and I hear nothing, or (b) gives me the modprobe error:

"The following error occurred running the modprobe program:

/lib/modules/2.4.2-2/kernel/drivers/sound/sb.o:
init_module: No such device
/lib/modules/2.4.2-2/kernel/drivers/sound/sb.o: insmod/lib/modules/2.4.2-2/kernel/drivers/sound/sb.o failed
/lib/modules/2.4.2-2/kernel/drivers/sound/sb.o: insmod sound-slot-0 failed"

Does that tell you anything? I'm not sure how to interpret it.

Thanks!

[demetrius]

I would guess that it is the on-board sound on your motherboard that is causing your problems. On most motherboards that include sound on-board there is a BIOS option to turn it off. Take a look in your BIOS and see if it can be disabled, then try running sndconfig again.

[redhatter]

Thanks Demetrius.

How do I "take a look in my BIOS"? I don't know what that is.

[demetrius]

Your BIOS is the software that controls your motherboard. You can usually access it by pressing your 'Del' key at the post screen (screen that displays your CPU, RAM and Hardives when you first boot up) it should say at the bottom of the screen what key to press to ener BIOS setup. In most cases it is 'Del' but for some motherboards it is one of your function keys.

[sincka]

redhatter:

BIOS = Basic Input Output System

The errors are given because YOU need to first of all include the driver for your snd card into your kernel. A way to do that is to recompile the kernel.

Thrust me... it's not as hard as it sounds. Get a kernel source from kernel.org and untar it in /usr/src

then go into the /usr/src/linux-2.4.5 or whatever and execute these

make menuconfig <--- your say what you want in the kernel
make dep
make clean
make bzImage <--- makes the image
make modules
make modules_install

Then copy your bzImage from /usr/src/linux-2.4.5/arch/i386/boot to /
or /boot

Then you edit your lilo.conf (assuming that is on your mbr) and you reboot with your new kernel... if you've seleced to include the necessary drivers for the snd card it should work.

If that doesn't work then choose to install your sound blaster (sb.o) drivers as modules.

Then do all the steps to compile the kernel again.

You edit your /etc/modules add

modprobe sb io=0x220 irq=5 dma=1


Then do

chmod +x /etc/modules


then go to /etc and run modules

./modules


When you run modules you shouldn't get any errors... the try running sndconfig.

If sndconfig doesn't work then you do this:

adduser put_your_username audio
then
chmod 777 /dev/mixer*
then
chmod 777 /dev/audio*
then
chmod 777 /dev/dsp*

Now I've given you pretty much every solution to your problem. If you sill cannot configure your sound after all of this then you can contact me at

licq # = 12638224

Hope you get it working man.. a while ago when I started using GNU/Linux, it took me a while to get my sound working but I was very happy when I did.

Anyway man.. DON'T GIVE UP OR I'LL SPANK YOU!!!

[redhatter]

I have sound! Thankfully, it wasn't that bad, all I had to do was change the settings in the BIOS, as Demetrius suggested. There was an old school "settings" screen, and it said "Onboard sound card" with an enable/disable toggle. I disabled the onboard card, re-ran sndconfig, and there it was, Linus telling me how to pronounce Linux!

I was psyched!

Sincka, thanks for your advice as well. Thankfully, I didn't have to recompile the kernel, but at least now I know how to do it.

Another success for linuxnewbie.org message boards. Thank you for all your help.

[sincka]

Yay for the redhatter :P

Hehe... I'm so stoned :p

[redhatter]

Sincka,

Me too ;-). Glad to see we're on the same wavelength.