Re: Problems regarding sound
vivek shah wrote:
> hello,
> I am using Debain Etch on my Acer laptop and it was running
> fine till the sound stopped working suddenly. I was playing a movie on
> VLC player and in the middle it just stopped working. After that I
> tried
> cat /dev/urandom > /dev/dsp
> but I didnt get any sound.
> I checked that my user was in the group audio and the above command
> didn't give anything as root too.
>
> I checked with alsamixer and nothing was muted. I ran alsaconf which
> ran successfully but still nothing. Even after rebooting nothing
> happened.
>
> Please note I did no upgrade or package install when this problem
> occured. It just stopped in the middle.
> I checked to see if the sound-card had shorted out and so I ran Ubuntu
> 7.04 Live CD and I got the startup sounds in that.
>
> Please suggest what should I do
>
It seems that alsaconf is no longer supported by Debian developers (see bug
432678) and that running it can cause sound to stop working.
There was a previous thread [2] in which OSS apps running under ALSA stopped
working (eg XMMS, Audacity, etc). Check that /dev/dsp exists; if not check that
the snd_pcm_oss is loaded:
# file /dev/dsp
/dev/dsp: ERROR: cannot open `/dev/dsp' (No such file or directory)
# modprobe snd_pcm_oss
# file /dev/dsp
/dev/dsp: character special (14/3)
Apparently, you must NOT use alsaconf but you must rely on udev instead. So a
reboot should fix the system, although it did not in your case. Perhaps you have
two sound cards and one has gone on the blink? [3]
[1] http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=432678
[2] http://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2007/07/msg00454.html
[3]
http://newbiedoc.berlios.de/wiki/Sound_in_Debian_GNU/Linux#Some_applications_.28OSS_applications.29_produce_no_sound_in_ALSA
--
Chris.
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