A new laptop sound problem - Page 8

Eino · posted: 2014-05-20 00:57

I knew it was something simple we were missing.
Backtrack to the beginning to find the simple mistake. Seems to work almost every time __{{emoticon}}__

Silent Observer · posted: 2014-05-20 10:00

Eino wrote:I knew it was something simple we were missing.
Backtrack to the beginning to find the simple mistake. Seems to work almost every time __{{emoticon}}__

Yep, almost every time... __{{emoticon}}__

fatmac · posted: 2014-05-20 10:29

Glad to hear you got your sound back - things like this happen to all of us at some time or other. __{{emoticon}}__

Silent Observer

...aaaand, it's gone again. Same symptoms as before; any attempt to play any sound causes volumeicon to grab all the CPU cycles it can, pushing system CPU to 100% (should be 7-15% at idle), with no sound output. Running the speaker test from Control Centre results in a hang with"front left" on screen and no sound.

Potentially relevant recent events: installation of streamtuner2 version 2.1.0, and my girlfriend tripping over the power cord for the laptop and not noticing -- leading to an unclean shutdown (with sound playing until voltage dropped too low) when the battery went flat, and a bunch of messages about"deleted inode has zero dtime" during the startup fsck. Barring some brilliant recommendation, I'm going to save time by skipping directly to reinstalling antiX, and I'm also going to start looking for a 16-32 GB laptop IDE platter hard disk, or real SSD with laptop IDE interface. I'm calling this my cue that the compact flash I'm using in place of a hard disk is too delicate, in terms of losing or corrupting data on power loss, to use as a primary storage device.

fatmac · posted: 2014-05-21 06:48

If you live anywhere near me, Surrey/Hants Border (UK), I have a 20GB 2.5" IDE going spare.

Silent Observer · posted: 2014-05-23 00:22

fatmac wrote:If you live anywhere near me, Surrey/Hants Border (UK), I have a 20GB 2.5" IDE going spare.

Thanks, Fatmac; that's exactly what I'm after -- unfortunately,I'm on the wrong side of the Atlantic, and I can get one from eBay in USA for less than it would cost to ship that one across the pond.

Silent Observer · posted: 2014-05-24 13:21

Okay, I've reinstalling antiX 13.2 on the latptop, and it's now downloading and installing the 1100+ updates from wheezy to testing. Once that's done, I'll run the little changes to get OSS-based sound working (already got alsa loading on the USB sound card, but no sound in gweled), download and install a couple updated kernels that I know (from previous use) work, and try to get all my customizations back in (already copied my conky configuration and wallpapers from the old folder), and expand the root partition a bit (that'll require booting back into the antiX Live USB to run gparted on the root partition, which I forgot to do before installing; I haven't yet gotten Parted Magic to work on the laptop). FWIW, every time I do this (boot from USB, install antiX) it gets a little easier; I'm building up a mental list of stuff not to do...

Eino · posted: 2014-05-24 16:34

Silent Observer wrote:, but no sound in gweled),

do" lsmod | grep snd"
To see if you have midi support for the game.

Silent Observer · posted: 2014-05-24 22:29

What I recall was having to enable oss in some manner -- let me go check the old thread.

Eino · posted: 2014-05-24 22:34

This should do it.
If you have OSS installed.

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modprobe snd-pcm-oss ; modprobe snd-mixer-oss ; modprobe snd-seq-oss

Silent Observer · posted: 2014-05-24 23:36

Hmmm. I have installed oss-compat, and run the modprobe string as Eino reiterated. Unfortunately, now I'm back to the system failing to detect the USB sound device during startup; ALSA start during boot reports"no sound cards found". I've double checked that the USB isn't being blocked, and looked at the alsa-base.conf and oss-compat.conf files:

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$ cat etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf
# autoloader aliases
install sound-slot-0 /sbin/modprobe snd-card-0
install sound-slot-1 /sbin/modprobe snd-card-1
install sound-slot-2 /sbin/modprobe snd-card-2
install sound-slot-3 /sbin/modprobe snd-card-3
install sound-slot-4 /sbin/modprobe snd-card-4
install sound-slot-5 /sbin/modprobe snd-card-5
install sound-slot-6 /sbin/modprobe snd-card-6
install sound-slot-7 /sbin/modprobe snd-card-7
# Cause optional modules to be loaded above generic modules
install snd /sbin/modprobe --ignore-install snd && { /sbin/modprobe --quiet snd-ioctl32 ; /sbin/modprobe --quiet snd-seq ; : ; }
install snd-rawmidi /sbin/modprobe --ignore-install snd-rawmidi && { /sbin/modprobe --quiet snd-seq-midi ; : ; }
install snd-emu10k1 /sbin/modprobe --ignore-install snd-emu10k1 && { /sbin/modprobe --quiet snd-emu10k1-synth ; : ; }
# Keep snd-pcsp from beeing loaded as first soundcard
options snd-pcsp index=-2
# Keep snd-usb-audio from beeing loaded as first soundcard
# options snd-usb-audio index=-2
# Prevent abnormal drivers from grabbing index 0
options bt87x index=-2
options cx88_alsa index=-2
options snd-atiixp-modem index=-2
options snd-intel8x0m index=-2
options snd-via82xx-modem index=-2
dqualls@Little-Luddite:~
$ cat etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base-blacklist.conf
# Uncomment these entries in order to blacklist unwanted modem drivers
# blacklist snd-atiixp-modem
# blacklist snd-intel8x0m
# blacklist snd-via82xx-modem
# Comment this entry in order to load snd-pcsp driver
blacklist snd-pcsp
dqualls@Little-Luddite:~
$ cat etc/modprobe.d/oss-compat.conf
softdep snd-pcm post: snd-pcm-oss
softdep snd-mixer post: snd-mixer-oss

aplay -L and lsmod | grep"snd" don't reveal much; ALSA isn't loading due to no sound hardware detected. I don't think this is a bad USB port; I had much less than the usual amount of trouble getting a boot from USB for the reinstall and again to resize partitions to give the root more room.

Silent Observer · posted: 2014-05-25 01:09

...and now, after just unplugging and replugging the USB sound device:

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$ aplay -L
null
    Discard all samples (playback) or generate zero samples (capture)
default:CARD=Device
    USB PnP Sound Device, USB Audio
    Default Audio Device
sysdefault:CARD=Device
    USB PnP Sound Device, USB Audio
    Default Audio Device
front:CARD=Device,DEV=0
    USB PnP Sound Device, USB Audio
    Front speakers
surround40:CARD=Device,DEV=0
    USB PnP Sound Device, USB Audio
    4.0 Surround output to Front and Rear speakers
surround41:CARD=Device,DEV=0
    USB PnP Sound Device, USB Audio
    4.1 Surround output to Front, Rear and Subwoofer speakers
surround50:CARD=Device,DEV=0
    USB PnP Sound Device, USB Audio
    5.0 Surround output to Front, Center and Rear speakers
surround51:CARD=Device,DEV=0
    USB PnP Sound Device, USB Audio
    5.1 Surround output to Front, Center, Rear and Subwoofer speakers
surround71:CARD=Device,DEV=0
    USB PnP Sound Device, USB Audio
    7.1 Surround output to Front, Center, Side, Rear and Woofer speakers
iec958:CARD=Device,DEV=0
    USB PnP Sound Device, USB Audio
    IEC958 (S/PDIF) Digital Audio Output
dmix:CARD=Device,DEV=0
    USB PnP Sound Device, USB Audio
    Direct sample mixing device
dsnoop:CARD=Device,DEV=0
    USB PnP Sound Device, USB Audio
    Direct sample snooping device
hw:CARD=Device,DEV=0
    USB PnP Sound Device, USB Audio
    Direct hardware device without any conversions
plughw:CARD=Device,DEV=0
    USB PnP Sound Device, USB Audio
    Hardware device with all software conversions
dqualls@Little-Luddite:~
$ lsmod | grep"snd"
snd_usb_audio          73509  0 
snd_usbmidi_lib        12785  1 snd_usb_audio
snd_hwdep               4064  1 snd_usb_audio
snd_pcm_oss            26709  0 
snd_mixer_oss          10327  1 snd_pcm_oss
snd_pcm                50454  2 snd_pcm_oss,snd_usb_audio
snd_page_alloc          5015  1 snd_pcm
snd_seq_oss            20893  1 
snd_seq_midi_event      3645  1 snd_seq_oss
snd_rawmidi            12723  1 snd_usbmidi_lib
snd_seq                34663  2 snd_seq_midi_event,snd_seq_oss
snd_seq_device          3890  3 snd_seq,snd_rawmidi,snd_seq_oss
snd_timer              12034  2 snd_pcm,snd_seq
snd                    36700  11 snd_pcm_oss,snd_usb_audio,snd_hwdep,snd_timer,snd_pcm,snd_seq,snd_rawmidi,snd_usbmidi_lib,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_device,snd_mixer_oss
soundcore               3447  1 snd

But still no sound, and the speakertest from Control Centre hangs with"front left" on screen.

Eino · posted: 2014-05-25 07:40

Do a

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modprobe snd-usb-audio

Then reboot you should have the usb audio back.

fatmac · posted: 2014-05-25 07:52

Just thinking aloud, but if it is a usb device, perhaps giving the system more time to find & initiate usb devices might help.
Try adding rootdelay=10 to your grub boot line, wouldn't hurt to try.

Eino · posted: 2014-05-25 07:56

fatmac wrote:Just thinking aloud, but if it is a usb device, perhaps giving the system more time to find & initiate usb devices might help.
Try adding rootdelay=10 to your grub boot line, wouldn't hurt to try.

I can see that being a issue.