ALSA Mixer Trouble

[Terry Hancock <hancock@earthlink.net>]

Hi,

I just installed the ALSA driver on my system, which
appeared to go perfectly (after a lot of sweat, anyway :) ).

However, when I run "amixer" to unmute the card, 
according to the INSTALL instructions and the
online FAQ, I get:

peregrin:/proc/asound# amixer set Master on 
Can't access mixer 1/0
Failed to open mixer device

Clearly I'm missing a step somewhere.  Also, possibly
of use, here is /etc/modutils/alsa_sound which I
created after the install.  Running update-modules
sticks this text into the /etc/conf.modules file
(I checked to make sure):

# Modules setup for ALSA Sound driver
# Set up by Terry Hancock, 2000-3/26
# based on ALSA install instructions

#ISA PnP support
options isapnp isapnp_reserve_irq=9,10,11,12,13

#ALSA native device support (Avance Logic ALS120 --> Avance Logic ALS100
driver)
alias char-major-116 snd
options snd snd_major=116 snd_cards_limit=1
alias snd-card-0 snd-card-als100
options snd-card-als100 snd_index=1 snd_id="ALS120"

#OSS/Free setup
alias char-major-14 soundcore
alias sound-slot-0 snd-card-0
alias sound-services-0-0 snd-mixer-oss
alias sound-services-0-1 snd-seq-oss
alias sound-services-0-3 snd-pcm1-oss
alias sound-services-0-12 snd-pcm1-oss

Also maybe useful:

peregrin:/etc/modutils# lsmod
Module                  Size  Used by
ppp_deflate            38660   0  (autoclean)
bsd_comp                3600   0  (autoclean)
snd-card-als100         4020   0 
snd-mpu401-uart         1472   0  [snd-card-als100]
isapnp                 22949   0  [snd-card-als100]
snd-midi               12836   0  [snd-card-als100 snd-mpu401-uart]
snd-seq-device          2896   1  [snd-card-als100]
snd-sb16-dsp           15408   0  [snd-card-als100]
snd-pcm1               17256   0  [snd-sb16-dsp]
snd-mixer              29308   0  [snd-card-als100 snd-sb16-dsp]
snd-pcm                 8632   0  [snd-card-als100 snd-sb16-dsp
snd-pcm1]
snd-opl3                1760   0  [snd-card-als100]
snd-hwdep               2412   0  [snd-card-als100 snd-opl3]
snd-timer               8004   0  [snd-pcm1 snd-opl3]
snd                    34080   1  [snd-card-als100 snd-mpu401-uart
snd-midi sn
seq-device snd-sb16-dsp snd-pcm1 snd-mixer snd-pcm snd-opl3 snd-hwdep
snd-time
unix                    9884  47  (autoclean)
soundcore               2372   2  [snd]
serial                 19404   2 
parport_pc              6964   1  (autoclean)
lp                      4956   0  (unused)
parport                 7060   1  [parport_pc lp]
ppp                    20460   2  [ppp_deflate bsd_comp]
slhc                    4232   1  [ppp]
ne2k-pci                3840   1 
8390                    5828   0  [ne2k-pci]
rarp                    2864   0  (unused)
umsdos                 24192   0  (unused)
ufs                    52736   0  (unused)
sysv                   23672   0  (unused)
smbfs                  25016   0  (unused)
vfat                    8816   0  (unused)
nfs                    28120   0  (unused)
lockd                  30888   0  [nfs]
sunrpc                 52132   0  [nfs lockd]
autofs                  8932   0  (unused)

Anyway, there's no man page for amixer, and documentation
for the alsautils package seems to be extremely scarce,
so I'm hoping somebody knows what's going on, as I'm
starting to get stumped.  Thanks.

--

BTW, it would be nice to CC this to me direct, I know some
people on this list feel that it is inappropriate to
post questions without taking the list, but it's
pretty much like drinking from a firehose. Has anybody
considered maybe breaking this list up by sub-topics
or something?  (e.g. debian-user-install, 
debian-user-drivers, etc.) I've joined this list about
three times and finally given up after less than a
week each time, just because it really chokes up my
mailbox.  (Not that the content is bad, mind you,
just copious).


-- 
Terry Hancock
hancock@earthlink.net