Sound and task bar volume control broken

Stuart O'mahony · posted: 2010-03-13 08:49

Virtualbox just a moment ago gave me a black screen, and upon rebooting the alsa sound plugin has screwed, and the task volume control fails to appear.

Here's some output when playing a music video on mplayer:

Code: Select all

stuart@antiX1:~$ mplayer /mnt/sda1/Music/Lou\ Barlow\ -\ The\ Right.avi MPlayer SVN-r30075 (C) 2000-2009 MPlayer Team
Can't open joystick device /dev/input/js0: No such file or directory
Can't init input joystick
mplayer: could not connect to socket
mplayer: No such file or directory
Failed to open LIRC support. You will not be able to use your remote control.

Playing /mnt/sda1/Music/Lou Barlow - The Right.avi.
AVI file format detected.
[aviheader] Video stream found, -vid 0
[aviheader] Audio stream found, -aid 1
VIDEO:  [XVID]  536x354  16bpp  25.000 fps  1280.5 kbps (156.3 kbyte/s)
Clip info:
 Comments: .ooOO ROSA MANNEN 2009 OOoo.
==========================================================================
Opening video decoder: [ffmpeg] FFmpeg's libavcodec codec family
Selected video codec: [ffodivx] vfm: ffmpeg (FFmpeg MPEG-4)
==========================================================================
==========================================================================
Opening audio decoder: [mp3lib] MPEG layer-2, layer-3
AUDIO: 48000 Hz, 2 ch, s16le, 160.0 kbit/10.42% (ratio: 20000->192000)
Selected audio codec: [mp3] afm: mp3lib (mp3lib MPEG layer-2, layer-3)
==========================================================================
[AO_ALSA] alsa-lib: confmisc.c:768:(parse_card) cannot find card '0'
[AO_ALSA] alsa-lib: conf.c:4154:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_card_driver returned error: No such file or directory
[AO_ALSA] alsa-lib: confmisc.c:392:(snd_func_concat) error evaluating strings
[AO_ALSA] alsa-lib: conf.c:4154:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_concat returned error: No such file or directory
[AO_ALSA] alsa-lib: confmisc.c:1251:(snd_func_refer) error evaluating name
[AO_ALSA] alsa-lib: conf.c:4154:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_refer returned error: No such file or directory
[AO_ALSA] alsa-lib: conf.c:4633:(snd_config_expand) Evaluate error: No such file or directory
[AO_ALSA] alsa-lib: pcm.c:2211:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM default
[AO_ALSA] Playback open error: No such file or directory
Failed to initialize audio driver 'alsa'
[AO OSS] audio_setup: Can't open audio device /dev/dsp: Permission denied
[AO_ALSA] alsa-lib: confmisc.c:768:(parse_card) cannot find card '0'
[AO_ALSA] alsa-lib: conf.c:4154:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_card_driver returned error: No such file or directory
[AO_ALSA] alsa-lib: confmisc.c:392:(snd_func_concat) error evaluating strings
[AO_ALSA] alsa-lib: conf.c:4154:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_concat returned error: No such file or directory
[AO_ALSA] alsa-lib: confmisc.c:1251:(snd_func_refer) error evaluating name
[AO_ALSA] alsa-lib: conf.c:4154:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_refer returned error: No such file or directory
[AO_ALSA] alsa-lib: conf.c:4633:(snd_config_expand) Evaluate error: No such file or directory
[AO_ALSA] alsa-lib: pcm.c:2211:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM default
[AO_ALSA] Playback open error: No such file or directory
[AO ESD] esd_open_sound failed: Connection timed out
waitpid(): No child processes
AO: [pulse] Init failed: Internal error
[JACK] cannot open server
ao_nas: init(): Can't open nas audio server -> nosound
[AO SDL] Samplerate: 48000Hz Channels: Stereo Format s16le
[AO_ALSA] alsa-lib: confmisc.c:768:(parse_card) cannot find card '0'
[AO_ALSA] alsa-lib: conf.c:4154:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_card_driver returned error: No such file or directory
[AO_ALSA] alsa-lib: confmisc.c:392:(snd_func_concat) error evaluating strings
[AO_ALSA] alsa-lib: conf.c:4154:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_concat returned error: No such file or directory
[AO_ALSA] alsa-lib: confmisc.c:1251:(snd_func_refer) error evaluating name
[AO_ALSA] alsa-lib: conf.c:4154:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_refer returned error: No such file or directory
[AO_ALSA] alsa-lib: conf.c:4633:(snd_config_expand) Evaluate error: No such file or directory
[AO_ALSA] alsa-lib: pcm.c:2211:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM default
[AO SDL] Unable to open audio: No available audio device
DVB card number must be between 1 and 4
AO: [null] 48000Hz 2ch s16le (2 bytes per sample)
Starting playback...

This is the second time this has happened. Last time, however, something else had borked, so I just did a fresh install. Not again; not now!

Any ideas?

Stuart O'mahony · posted: 2010-03-13 09:13

Node related?

When running Grip I get an error dialogue box:

Error: Unable to initialize [/dev/cdrom]

(I think node is the right term...)

anticapitalista · posted: 2010-03-13 11:40

Is the error from antiX running inside virtualbox, or antiX as the host OS?

Stuart O'mahony · posted: 2010-03-13 11:53

anticapitalista wrote:Is the error from antiX running inside virtualbox, or antiX as the host OS?

The host. I only mention Virtualbox because it caused the screen black out, and caused me to reboot, it's otherwise irrelevant.

I found this...

========= SCRAPER REMOVED AN EMBEDDED LINK HERE ===========
url was:"http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=45003"
linktext was:"http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=45003"
====================================
" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false

...but my /dev/dsp is already in the audio group. I did a chmod a+xrw on dsp, and got mplayer's sound back, but udev resets the permissions at boot time. This isn't much of a solution however, as it only causes mplayer to default to oss audio output. Alsa is what's needed for youtube, and everything else.

My system's flaking a bit: first, the broken menu shutdown/reboot, now the above.

anticapitalista · posted: 2010-03-13 11:57

There is something wrong with the system to have so many errors. maybe there was a bad burn that only shows up when installing.
What repos are you using?

inxi -r

Stuart O'mahony · posted: 2010-03-13 12:08

Code: Select all

stuart@antiX1:~$ inxi -r
Repos:     Active apt sources in file: /etc/apt/sources.list
           deb http://fr1.mepis-deb.org/mepis/ mepis-8.0 main
           deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ testing main contrib non-free
           deb http://security.debian.org/ testing/updates main contrib non-free
           deb http://www.debian-multimedia.org/ testing main
           deb http://apt.progchild.de/ stable main
           deb http://restricted.mepis-deb.org/mepiscr/testrepo/ mepis8cr test-restricted
           Active apt sources in file: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/opera.list
           deb http://deb.opera.com/opera/ stable non-free

You could be right about the bad burn. My DVD drive makes some nasty noises at times, and now I think about Puppy was flaking on me too. Because the checksums and k3b reports were okay, I assumed all was well... damn!

anticapitalista · posted: 2010-03-13 12:12

It may also be the dvd driver that is the problem.

Minor point about sources.list. It is probably best not to enable the MEPIS Community Repos.

Does livecd work ok?

Stuart O'mahony · posted: 2010-03-13 12:24

Yeah, the live run seemed fine, but I installed Antix straight off the bat, so it's hard to know for sure.

You mean the actual BIOS driver, as opposed to linux drivers/firmware?

anticapitalista · posted: 2010-03-13 12:29

I mean the actual dvd itself, but if live is working ok, I guess that is not the problem.
From live, can you play audio/video?

Stuart O'mahony · posted: 2010-03-13 12:49

Yep, sound/audio; all was fine with live. I really haven't done much on these installs other than run applications.

anticapitalista · posted: 2010-03-13 12:52

I know this might be a pain, but you could install (again) and straight away try audi/video before upgrading anything and see if all is ok.

Stuart O'mahony · posted: 2010-03-13 12:57

I tested the internet connection, and audio/video first thing on previous installs, and it was fine. I do this with every distro, just so as not to waste time upgrading the system without the basics working.

anticapitalista · posted: 2010-03-13 13:01

So, problems started after an upgrade?

Stuart O'mahony · posted: 2010-03-13 13:13

Hmm, well, I hadn't upgraded the system the first time round, and did the second. In each instance, the sound issue came up after running applications: Virtualbox this time; Pingus the first. The Virtualbox .deb I got from the official site, Pingus was in the repos (don't know which http)

deb
========= SCRAPER REMOVED AN EMBEDDED LINK HERE ===========
url was:"http://restricted.mepis-deb.org/mepiscr/testrepo/"
linktext was:"http://restricted.mepis-deb.org/mepiscr/testrepo/"
====================================
" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false mepis8cr test-restricted was the only community repo I added.

Stuart O'mahony · posted: 2010-03-13 13:24

Oh, and Rox-filer won't unmount my drive:

Unmounting /mnt/sda1
sh: pumount: Permission denied
Unmount failed

If I were to delete my /dev folder, these files would get re-written at boot, right?

EDIT: Scrap that. I have seen already that they get re-written.