PulseAudio

Thu Feb 25 17:10:27 UTC 2010

On Mon, Feb 22, 2010 at 3:15 PM, Thomas Milne
<tbrucemilne-TcoXwbchSccMMYnvST3LeUB+6BGkLq7r at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 22, 2010 at 2:54 PM, Thomas Milne
> <tbrucemilne-TcoXwbchSccMMYnvST3LeUB+6BGkLq7r at public.gmane.org> wrote:
>> On Fri, Feb 19, 2010 at 4:00 PM, Tyler Aviss <tjaviss-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> wrote:
>>> Modern pulseaudio behavior is to run a "session" when you login to X.
>>>  /etc/X11/Xsession.d/70pulseaudio
>>>
>>> The /etc/init.d/ one doesn't do anything unless you do a bunch of
>>> reconfiguration to use system-wide pulse, which actually tends to
>>> cause more issues rather than less.
>>>
>>> To see if you're already got a pulse session, try:
>>>  pulseaudio --check && echo OK
>>>
>>
>> scribe at scribe14:~$ pulseaudio --check && echo OK
>> OK
>>
>>> To kill one (although I think gnome respawns them)
>>>  pulseaudio -k
>>>
>>> It looks like ALSA did find your card, try "aplay -l" to list it from alsa.
>>>
>>>
>> scribe at scribe14:~$ aplay -l
>> **** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
>> card 0: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 0: AD198x Analog [AD198x Analog]
>>  Subdevices: 0/1
>>  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
>> card 0: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 1: AD198x Digital [AD198x Digital]
>>  Subdevices: 1/1
>>  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
>>
>>
>>> Another problem may be that though your card is intel-HDA compatible,
>>> there are actually a whole whackload of sub-models that your specific
>>> chipset might fall under. Check for funky entries under:
>>>  /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf
>>>  /etc/modprobe.d/snd-hda-intel.conf
>>>
>>
>> Perhaps this is the problem, because I have no such file as
>> /etc/modprobe.d/snd-hda-intel.conf:
>
> Actually, I've checked on a couple of the systems here that have
> sound, and they don't have this file either. Is the configuration
> stored somewhere else now?
>
>> scribe at scribe14:~$ ls -l /etc/modprobe.d/
>> total 32
>> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2497 2009-10-11 15:07 alsa-base.conf
>> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root  325 2009-09-15 14:46 blacklist-ath_pci.conf
>> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1603 2009-09-15 14:46 blacklist.conf
>> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root  213 2009-09-15 14:46 blacklist-firewire.conf
>> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root  662 2009-09-15 14:46 blacklist-framebuffer.conf
>> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root  156 2009-10-11 15:07 blacklist-modem.conf
>> lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root   41 2009-11-20 13:15 blacklist-oss.conf ->
>> /lib/linux-sound-base/noOSS.modprobe.conf
>> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1077 2009-09-15 14:46 blacklist-watchdog.conf
>> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root   16 2009-08-26 02:49 libpisock9.conf
>>
>>> The second one will have model-specific info. If the model is wrong,
>>> your sound won't work. For example I have:
>>>  options snd-hda-intel model=m51va
>>>
>>> Other options can be:
>>>  options snd-hda-intel model=realtek
>>>  options snd-hda-intel model=m51va
>>>  options snd-hda-intel model=6stack
>>>  options snd-hda-intel model=3stack
>>>  options snd-hda-intel model=acer
>>>  etc etc
>>>
>>> You'd have to rmmod and them modprobe the driver (snd_hda_intel) to
>>> try new ones after editing the config, or stop/start ALSA, or reboot.
>>
>> So, what if I don't even have that file? Sorry, I'm in a little over
>> my depth here :-\
>>
>>> I think the Nvidia one might be realtek based? I'd have to check my
>>> other machine which has an Nvidia chipset and get back to you on that
>>> for the params that worked on that one...
>>
>> If you have a sample file I could try to copy from, that would be
>> great! Many thanks for the tips :-)
>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Fri, Feb 19, 2010 at 1:48 PM, Thomas Milne
>>> <tbrucemilne-TcoXwbchSccMMYnvST3LeUB+6BGkLq7r at public.gmane.org> wrote:
>>>> Sitting at the machine now. In the sound prefs (the speaker icon in
>>>> the panel) it does show the sound card and even will show what
>>>> application is using it and so on, but still no sound. I'm not sure
>>>> what to check to see if the correct 'profile' is being used, but
>>>> nothing appears to be muted anywhere.
>>>>
>>>> I'm not sure how to see if the daemon is running, it doesn't respond
>>>> the way I'm used to:
>>>>
>>>> scribe at scribe14:~$ sudo /etc/init.d/pulseaudio restart
>>>> [sudo] password for scribe:
>>>>  * PulseAudio configured for per-user sessions
>>>> scribe at scribe14:~$ pulseaudio
>>>> E: socket-server.c: bind(): Address already in use
>>>> E: module.c: Failed to load  module "module-esound-protocol-unix"
>>>> (argument: ""): initialization failed.
>>>> E: main.c: Module load failed.
>>>> E: main.c: Failed to initialize daemon.
>>>> scribe at scribe14:~$ pulse-session
>>>> E: main.c: Daemon startup failed.
>>>>
>>>> That could be because it's already running, though, no?
>>>>
>>>> There was no .asoundrc file to nuke.
>>>>
>>>> Thanks!
>>>>
>>>> On Wed, Feb 17, 2010 at 8:44 AM, Tyler Aviss <tjaviss-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> wrote:
>>>>> I found a couple things when updating to karmic on various machines
>>>>> that could case this:
>>>>>  - Gnome/pulse found a different "default" soundcard than what they should have
>>>>>  - PA set the volume to nothing in the sound panel mixer, or turned on mute
>>>>>  - Wrong "profile" in the hardware settings of the sound prefs
>>>>>
>>>>> If you have a .asoundrc file in your homedir you may need to nuke that too
>>>>>
>>>>> Are you seeing your soundcard? Is the pulseaudio daemon loading?
>>>>>
>>>>> On Wed, Feb 17, 2010 at 8:23 AM, Thomas Milne
>>>>> <tbrucemilne-TcoXwbchSccMMYnvST3LeUB+6BGkLq7r at public.gmane.org> wrote:
>>>>>> Ha! So it finally got to me. So far on my home machine it's been no
>>>>>> problem, so I've been wondering why everyone hates Pulse so much.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Until now. At work we upgraded all the machines to Karmic Koala and
>>>>>> now a lot of them have no sound. If you saw how we do our jobs, you
>>>>>> would understand what a horrifying thing this is ;)
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Anyhow, I remember some threads on here a while ago about fixing this
>>>>>> by using good 'ol OSS, but as these are work computers I thought I
>>>>>> would ask before I start trying some of the solutions. Is this really
>>>>>> the tried and true method?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I also found this link. Anyone else solve it like this?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> http://swiss.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1395089
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Thanks!
>>>>>>
>>>>>> --
>>>>>> TBM
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>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> --
>>>>> Tyler Aviss
>>>>> Systems Support
>>>>> LPIC/LPIC-2/CLA
>>>>>
>>>>> “Even enemies will help each other if they are together on a boat that
>>>>> is in trouble. ” – Sun Tzu
>>>>> --
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>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
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>>>> TBM
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>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Tyler Aviss
>>> Systems Support
>>> LPIC/LPIC-2/CLA
>>>
>>> “Even enemies will help each other if they are together on a boat that
>>> is in trouble. ” – Sun Tzu
>>> --
>>> The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://gtalug.org/
>>> TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
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>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> TBM
>>
>
>
>
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> TBM
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>

I'm a debian/Ubuntu user, so depending on your distro and version it
might be elsewhere. Do you get anything from this?
  grep -r 'snd-hda-intel' /etc/modprobe.d/*

If you don't have that, just creating the file mentioned before should
make it work for you after the next module reload. On some systems you
might still need to run "update-modules" after editing as well.

You might also want to try the following.
Find a .WAV file to test with, there's probably one or two in
/usr/share/sounds. I use this one
"/usr/share/sounds/alsa/Front_Center.wav" (from "alsa-utils" on my
box)
Login from command-line (don't login as a GUI user as that will start
pulse, we want to find out if the underlying ALSA layer is working
first).
Try this:
  aplay /usr/share/sounds/alsa/Front_Center.wav

You probably won't get any sound, so here's what we try.

1. Remove the snd-hda-intel module
  rmmod snd-hda-intel

2. Other modules may be linked to that that also need removing, but
hopefully not, but if they do rmmod them as well (lsmod shows
dependencies)

3. OK, so now you have no module, reinstall it and test one of the
other sound-chip types:

  insmod /lib/modules/$(uname
-r)/kernel/sound/pci/hda/snd-hda-intel.ko model=realtek

4. Check dmesg for anything interesting...

5. Now try to play again
  aplay /usr/share/sounds/alsa/Front_Center.wav

6. If that doesn't work, repeat 1-5 again, trying different modules
for #3. The ones I find common are: realtek, m51va, 3stack, 6stack,
acer. There is a BIG document on dealing with the snd-hda-intel
driver, which includes a module list here:
  http://wiki.sabayon.org/index.php?title=HOWTO:_Resolve_Problems_with_HDA-Intel_Sound_Cards
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