Some people on the #debian IRC channel gave me some useful advice
regarding Debian, sound and ALSA yesterday. It seems unlikely that the
advice is useful just to me. If it is good to post the advice where
others can search it out later, then the relevant log extract follows.
Keywords: Debian, sound, ALSA, OSS, NAS, mixer, amixer, scontrols, dsp,
kernel, module, Intel, AD1981.
#debianthb H (Thaddeus H. Black)
#debianBlissex H (http://WWW.sabi.co.UK/)
#debianasg H (Adam Garside)
#debianNiki H [/whois not captured]
#debian[nick1] H [actual nick unprintable]
thb Sound problem. On my system, /dev/dsp, /dev/midi and other sound
devices seem to accept sound data as normal, but the speaker produces
no sound. My mixer is not zeroed. I've ALSA and NAS installed, plus
Esound and Jack because other packages depend on them. If you have
experience debugging Debian sound: where should I start looking for
the solution, please?
asg thb: does 'cat /dev/urandom /dev/dsp' produce a horrible noise?
silence? or an error?
thb asg: thanks; stand by
thb asg: I ran the command you suggested as root. Silence, no error,
no exit until I hit ^C.
asg thb: okay, then your mixer may be mutted irrespective of the
levels
asg thb: or your speakers are not plugged in or wired properly.
Blissex thb: read carefully the troubleshooting, OSS comaptibility and
app config sections of http://tinyurl.com/4ogk2
thb asg: Okay. I'll go chew on that for a while.
thb Blissex: thank you. I will do it.
[nick1] Blissex, you wrote this conf?
Blissex [nick1]: yes, I did. More or less precisely for people like
your and thb.
Niki thb: Please run: amixer set 'Master' 'unmute' '100' and amixer
set 'PCM' 'unmute' '100', the try again.
thb Niki: understood; stand by.
thb Niki: error message: amixer: Unknown playback setup 'unmute'..
Blissex thb: swap around the 100 and unmute.
thb Blissex, Niki, asg: same error message after swapping. All right.
Something is evidently set up wrong on my system, but you have given
me some good ideas where to start looking for the solution. With
these new clues, I should go away for a while now and work on the
problem some more. Thank you. I may return with further questions
later.
asg thb: good luck on getting things working
Niki thb: Goog luck!
Blissex thb: try this more precisely:
Blissex thb: amixer sset Master 80% unmute
Blissex thb: some cards however do not need to have controls unmuted,
so if that the case, remove the unmute.
thb Blissex: Hrm. Same error msg: amixer: Unknown playback setup
'unmute'..
Blissex thb: to see what you can set or not, 'amixer' or 'amixer
scontrols' or 'amixer scontents'
Blissex thb: [nick1]: BTW, usually you should ask sound questions in
#ALSA
thb Blissex: didn't know about #ALSA; now I know. To answer the
question about amixer scontrols, it replies normally: it lists five
simple mixer controls: Master, Synth, Line, CD, Mic.
Blissex thb: you may have one of those cards without mute/unmute then.
thb Blissex: my sound chip is very common: AD1981, included on
millions of recent Intel boards. There is nothing unusual about it.
Blissex thb: are you using the 'snd-intel8x0' driver though?
thb Blissex: yes. Hard-compiled into the kernel; not a module.
Blissex thb: BTW ALSA should not be really compiled in the kernel,
there may be problems if it is done like that.
thb Blissex: wow! That, I did not know. Very good.
Blissex thb: also have a look here: http://alsa.opensrc.org/intel8x0
and the 8x0 subsection of http://tinyurl.com/4ogk2
I am not subscribed to debian-user, so please e-mail me directly if you
want to reach me over this.
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