SBLive - Could I be simpler?

[4tthieves]

I can not get my SBLive card to work in RH 7.2 (2.4.9-34). I have run through just about every help document I can find and have no luck. Read that having digital audio might be the problem and tried some things today - no sound.

I guess I don''t understand enough. I see that emu10k-1 is my driver, the machine knows I have an SBLive card and it won't work.

Can anyone suggest how I can troubleshoot this in a manner that won't overwhelm?

Appreciate any assistance. Thank you.

[mdwatts]

Are the sound modules showing as being loaded?

lsmod (to list the loaded modules)

Should show emu10k1 and sound and/or soundcore.

Do you have PnP OS disabled in the bios? This alone can cause pci cards to not be detected correctly.

[ntt.]

Am I right In thinking you're using the digital speaker output on your card to a set of digtal speakers?

If so, see this topic (http://linuxnewbie.org/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=54189).

[4tthieves]

First off - thanks for the advice. I have no sound, but I am gettiing much more familiar with the Linux file system and commands.

I am going to do a little more snooping around before I ask about a next step - I am sure that I am missing something.

[Orcs_ate_my_box]

I have the same sound card. It will work in Linux. Don't worry. The fact that Linux sees the card is a good thing. As previously mentioned, the problem is your system is not loading the driver. Odds are you have a modular kernel. Simply stated, this just means you can insert "modules" (or drivers) into the kernel as needed. With this being the case, you should be able to experiment a bit without causing yourself any real problems. With that said, as root:

1. insmod emu10k1
2. You might have to be a little more correct in the syntax as I dont remember the exact name of the driver. If emu10k1 failed try emu10k-1

You should see a message come back that will tell you if the module was loaded or if it failed. I would be very suprised if it failed. If it does not find the module, that is another matter we can address at the time. So if you see that the module was loaded, try playing a sound file. If you have xmms installed or some other similar mp3 player give that a try. I suspect you will need to do this also as root. If you now have sound you will need to change the file permissions on /dev/dsp in order to listen to music as anybody but root as I am sure that /dev/dsp belongs to root. I'm a little foggy on this one so if anybody needs to correct me please feel free:

3. chmod +666 /dev/dsp

I think that will give you the permissions you need to run audio files as somebody other than root. But under the current configuration, you will have to load your sound driver everytime you reboot. So you will need to modify one of your start up scripts. Again, it's been a long time since I played with RedHat, but I thought for some reason this was in /etc/rc.d. There is a startup script that you can edit to load the module automatically everytime you boot up. What was that in again? Anybody?

[4tthieves]

Okay - #1 is done - so far so good. The message I get back is "insmod: a module named emu10k1 already exists" - does this mean it is loaded?

Tried the CHMOD command and I got a too few arguments response.

Anxious for an update.

TY

[janet loves bill]

Try to access your mixer. I had same problem. If no mixer shows up you need to use the emu10k1-script and get it to load with digital support. Also, make sure that when you config new kernel with sound support that you use an M, not *. So your new kernal loads sound support as a module and not part of the kernel itself. In Slack 8.0 the sound module is not load'd at boot by default, so configuring a new kernel with sound support is first thing that should be done, good luck

[mdwatts]

Originally posted by 4tthieves
Okay - #1 is done - so far so good. The message I get back is "insmod: a module named emu10k1 already exists" - does this mean it is loaded?



Yes it does. That is why we suggested you first use 'lsmod' to see if the sound modules are already loaded.

chmod 666 /dev/dsp (without the +)

[ntt.]

Try running xmms (or anything that plays sound) from a command line - that way if it prints out any error messages, you'll see them. Also tell us exactly what xmms does - does it look like it's playign the file, or does it just refuse to play?