Re: sarge 2.6.8 kernel, ALSA ESS1869 No Sound
On Monday 24 January 2005 15:43, Colin Tuckley wrote:
> I'm running sarge and the 2.6.8-1-386 kernel.
>
> My ancient laptop has an ESS 1869 ISA sound card built in.
>
> The sound doesn't work and when I start KDE I get a message that says:
>
> "Error while initialising sound driver device: default can't be opened
> for playback"
>
This error indicates that the device node KDE is looking for is present, but
it's either locked by another process, or you are not a member of the audio
group, and thus don't have write permission to the device. If you suspect
the former, lsof can help you find which program is using the device. If
it's the latter, add yourself to the audio group, log out, and log back in.
> I've run alsaconf and get the following:
>
> ajp:/etc/modprobe.d# alsaconf
> Unloading sound driver modules...done.
> Probing legacy cards.. This may take a few minutes..
> Probing: es18xx : FOUND!!
>
> grep: /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base: No such file or directory
>
> Running update-modules...
> Loading driver...
> FATAL: Error inserting snd_es18xx
> (/lib/modules/2.6.8-1-386/kernel/sound/isa/snd-es18xx.ko): No such
> device Setting default volumes...
>
> I suspect this means the driver isn't built - any ideas where to get it
> from or how to build it? The only alsa-modules package I could find seems
> to be for a 2.4 kernel.
>
If you installed 2.6.8 through apt-get, then the module should be built.
Check the directory that it points to. It should be there. If it's not,
you may need to reinstall the kernel, because alsa drivers should come
standard with 2.6 kernels.
Check your loaded modules with lsmod. Make sure you don't have any OSS
modules grabbing your sound card, because alsa will fail if OSS grabs it
first. If the OSS modules are loaded, take them out of /etc/modules and
blacklist them from hotplug and discover so they don't get loaded again.
Justin Guerin
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