[PLUG] Regaining Lost Sound -- RESTORED

[Rich Shepard]

On Thu, 1 Mar 2007, Kenneth G. Stephens wrote:

> I just got through the fun of getting my sound back working after updating
> my kernel in FC5. Everyonce in a while the updates go just fine, but this
> time gmplayer played RocketBoom.com just fine but my realplayer playing
> Radio Paradise was silent.  It connected just fine and looked like it was
> playing just fine.  But no sound.  I opened kmix and discovered that
> realplay was connected to my on motherboard sound card while I could
> choose my alsa sound for the gmplayer.

Ken,

   In my case there were seveal factors that contributed to the problem. The
first was that snd-intel8x0.ko was trashed internally. That's why it
wouldn't load. After 'make modules; make modules_installed', it loaded just
fine, but after the snd-usb-audio. Since USB sound has no mixer support (or
minimal at best), neither aumix nor alsamixer would run.

   The second factor was that I had managed to build the 2.6.19.2 kernel
without the ability to rmmod. Can't explain why, but that's what I did.
Ergo, could not remove the sound modules and reinstall them in the proper
order. 'make; make modules; make modules_install;' move files to /boot, run
/sbin/lilo just in case, and a reboot fixed that problem.

   The third factor was sound modules still in the incorrect sequence.
Manually removed them all -- starting with the nVIDIA ones with the most
dependencies and working my way down the list -- followed by 'modprobe
snd-intel8x0' and 'modprobe snd-usb-audio'. Et voila! Eet woiked again.
Curiously, I had to increase the levels of all channels in alsamixer as well
as the pgm channel in aumix to bring the sound to a sufficiently high level.

> After much hunting, I discovered a file called /etc/asound.conf.  This
> was setup originally like this:

   I have an alsa-generated file (with warnings to not touch) in
/etc/modules.conf. However, the modules to be loaded area apparently the
ones in /etc/modprobe.d/sound. A Swiss fellow on the alsa mail list
recommeded that I modify that file (which had only the nVIDIA drivers, the
same as in /etc/modules.conf) to the following:

alias snd-card-0 snd-intel8x0
options snd-intel8x0 index=0
alias snd-card-1 snd-usb-audio
options snd-usb-audio index=1

alias sound-slot-0 snd-card-0
alias sound-slot-1 snd-card-1

   That, he assures me, will keep them in the proper order the next time I
reboot after a kernel change.

Thanks for your input,

Rich

-- 
Richard B. Shepard, Ph.D.               |    The Environmental Permitting
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