Re: A question about how to ask a question
Hello Zenaan,
Thanks for your detailed answer. On a general note, I tried to include
details that I thought are at least a bit relevant (thus exclude details
that I thought are not), in order not to make my post overly long. But
that also requires some expertise I may lack...
Le 10/03/2013 03:21, Zenaan Harkness a écrit :
On 3/10/13, Olivier Cailloux<olivier.cailloux@gmail.com> wrote:
My question is about... how to best ask a question! That is because I
...
Original question:
Hi list,
My graphic card is connected through HDMI to my screen. I get no sound,
* You have not said where your speakers are. There is an implication
that the speakers are in your monitor, but this is not clear.
Yes indeed, my speakers are in my monitor, but I did not mention that
because I had absolutely no idea that it could possibly matter. Does it?
* I reader, cannot be sure if your problem is simply a sound problem,
or a sound-through-hdmi problem.
I mentioned that sound through the other sound card works.
I don't have a hdmi connection I
could even test (I use a laptop with a displayport and vga port). So
(artificial example only) I don't want to step in ... I could well
make a useless suggestion or get "caught" by your lack of
clarity/assumption, or you could be more technically competant, and
since you're talking hdmi, you already know more than I do... example
only.
* Short version: you did not specify whether you are trying to get
sound to go through your HDMI cable. (I just have a line out on my
laptop which I use, for example.)
I thought that was clear, so thanks for mentioning that, I will try to
make it clearer next time.
and no error messages:
* Here, you do not say where you looked for error messages. Did you
check syslog, did you check the docs for the sound player you are
using to find out if it logs errors to some file somewhere?
* You see, when you say "[I got] no error messages" it's still
anybody's guess as how competant you are, or if you have truly made an
effort yourself, or not.
Okay, I could have made it more explicit. I meant that when I try
"aplay" command line utility, it does not give an error message on the
line. I assume that it would say so (on sysout or syserr, thus visible
in the terminal) if it detected an error, as it seems to be designed for
testing, and since the troubleshooting guide does not mention to look
for anywhere else for error messages. But I may be wrong.
sounds seem to play correctly, according to
software, but I hear none.
* Did you check your cable is plugged in? You did not say whether you
checked basic things.
I said the sound works on the same computer, with a different OS. It is
implicit that I do not change the cable configuration between two tests,
it seems to me. I thought it would be sufficient to exclude a hardware
problem such as an incorrect cable connection.
As if something was muted, though I checked
alsamixer ten times and activated everything I could.
* You are expressing frustration here. Many people do this (see my
most recent email an hour or so ago for an example), but it's not
useful. "I checked ten times" could easily be an exaggeration -
implying you might be an emotional "hot potato".
True. I’ll remove that.
I use a debian wheezy up to date. On the same computer, but a different
OS (Ubuntu 10.04), sound works.
* This ought to be useful information - but mostly for you to test.
I do not understand the "mostly for you to test" part.
You haven't said if you used a dual-boot or a live-cd of Ubuntu.
Does that matter? (It is a dual-boot in fact.)
I am
not technical enough to tell you what files to compare. But I've heard
of "asound.rc" or maybe it is "asoundrc" (don't remember sorry), so
you could hunt google for that, and Ubuntu/Debian, and compare the
files between the two OSs. But you have NOT taken advantage of this to
do more research yourself yet.
Well, I did. I have not mentionned it (but maybe I should have) because
I did not want to make my post even longer and because it should work
without these files. I checked for existence of any "*asound*" files in
my Ubuntu install: there is no. In debian, none either. So I thought
that’s not somewhere to search further.
The troubleshooting guide for alsa mentions that these files should not
be used in a working install (see Warning here:
http://alsa.opensrc.org/.asoundrc): "If your system won't work without
[these files], and you are running the most current version of ALSA, you
probably should file a bug report."
* When you have an apparent known pathway for helping yourself, and
you have not taken it, that should be taken by you first.
* If you do not know what to look for, and are unwilling to google it,
you could ask the question, eg "Can someone please advise which files
I can compare, between the Ubuntu and Debian, so I can find out why my
Debian sound does not work?"
Well, the Ubuntu install is much older than Debian, thus there is likely
many differences on the file level (the driver is older, alsa version is
older, even the kernel is probably a different version, etc.). I very
much doubt that comparing both installs is the most efficient way to
solve the problem. Or course I could take it step by step, replace each
pieces in Ubuntu that are different than in Debian. I would maybe
finally find out where the problem lies. So you may say I did not do it
because of laziness. But this would be absurdly time consuming, without
even any guarantee to find out where the problem is after all.
Or course, if one place no upper bound on the time one is ready to
devote to solve a problem, one can probably almost always solve it
(after all, I could learn how to program in low level C and look at the
source code). But the point of asking for help is to save time when it
becomes clear that it is unlikely the poster will be able to solve the
problem within a reasonable time frame by himself, it seems to me.
Not that I’m trying to justify all sorts of laziness here. I do have
tried to find a solution by myself and have looked in various
directions. It’s just that there’s a middle ground to be found...
I may have changed something to make it
work, but I don’t remember.
* This is a key datapoint for those who might be inclined to help you.
If you don't remember, you need to go back and test it.
* In other words, you appear to be being lazy, and instead of doing
the tests that you know you can and should do, you are hoping for a
quick-easy answer from someone else. It's fine to want that, but if
you don't get it, you need to go and do more work.
* So, there's a great next step for you - get your Ubuntu installation
working again, and that pathway should remind you of whether you did
anything to make it work, or not, and then report back. That way you
are doing what you can, and not demonstrating laziness (you may not
mean to be lazy, but that's what you seem to be saying...).
You are right, I realize this phrasing was probably not very clever.
However, the pathway you are talking about I do not see. My ubuntu
installation *is* working. I do not know how to remember what I did
exactly to make it work. And it might well be "nothing", it maybe just
worked out of the box. I honestly do not remember.
From aplay -L, AFAIU, alsa recognises three cards, namely default (plays
to pulseaudio), some ATI SB card and my Radeon card that I want to make
work.
When I play to the Radeon card (using aplay -vv -D
"plug:'hdmi:CARD=Generic,DEV=0'") I hear no sound, though everything
seems to work.
* Again, you had it working on Ubuntu, so go and test this same
command on your Ubuntu installation. Freedom does not mean free of
effort.
I have, and it works. Once again here I thought I would skip this
information to reduce length of post and because it is not surprising
that is works, considering sound works on my ubuntu installation and it
is a basic debug command that is suggested in the troubleshooting guide.
Though I agree I could have included the information, maybe it is a bad
choice I made.
When I play to the other sound card ("sysdefault:CARD=SB"), connected to
analog headphones, it works.
When I play to the default card, I can see through pavucontrol that
pulse audio receives sound, but I can hear nothing.
* This sounds to me like you might have a pulseaudio configuration
problem - seems obvious, so what have you tested along these lines.
Perhaps you didn't think to check? Or perhaps you simply didn't
provide that information in your email?
As far as I understand, these tests I did with aplay do not go to
pulseaudio: only the first card (of the list given by aplay -L) sends
sound to pulseaudio, the other cards I tried (with the aplay command)
should send sound directly to the card without going through pulseaudio.
I made these tests on purpose to bypass any possible pulseaudio related
problems. (Though I may be wrong again.)
To summarize, even though I do not agree with all your comments, it
definitely gives some ideas on how to improve my question. So thank you
for your answer once again.
On the negative side, though, if I understand you well enough, you seem
to suggest I should start by working approximately at least three full
days non stop on that question (supplementary to the time I spent
already) before I get the right to ask the question and not being
considered lazy because of the remaining things I did not try (like
reinstalling Ubuntu to see if sound works out of the box, or changing
the existing install piece by piece). If that is the case, then it is a
bit disappointing, IMHO. I thought mailing lists were there to help
people solve problems within a reasonable time frame.
Regards,
Olivier
HTH
Zenaan
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