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Re: New User Installation - Audio related



Antonio Villanueva wrote:

So I just installed Debian 3.0 and wondering why audio is not working. KDE config is telling me that there is no audio device. I don't remember any question during install about audio. The MB has onboard video, audio and LAN. Is there something else I needed to do to have it recognize that chipset? I welcome RTFM replies but please include a link to the FM's that talk directly about audio. I did see in another config screen that it picked up the audio information and said that one accessible by root. ESP was not running as far as I can tell. It reports an error with /dev/dsp when I try to run it stating at first permission denied but now (after a bit of stumbling) no device. Should I just install an old Sound Blaster that I have laying around? Or with that make no difference?


First, do an "lspci" to find out what audio chip you have.

Then you probably could make that work with the 2.2 kernel which you probably have, but I'd just upgrade to 2.4.18 or so. "apt-cache search kernel-image" will show you a list; pick the version and the cpu type that best matches your cpu, then "apt-get install <that_kernel_image>".

There's a fair chance that on reboot your audio will be working. You'll need to add your normal user to the "audio" group ("addgroup <user_name> audio") before that user logs in.

If it doesn't work, we can go from there. At that point, list your audio chip, any sound-related messages from "dmesg", and start testing either with X not running, and not kdm, gdm, etc, at the command line with a tool like "splay" to try playing an .ogg or .mp3 file, or with a simple X setup (icewm or wm, not KDE or Gnome) and xmms. You may need to unmute the sound with a tool like "aumix" or "amix" or "alsamix" at the command line, or xmix in X. Once you've got the sound working, you can switch back to the "bigger" windowing environments, like KDE or Gnome. The reason you don't want them running during setup is so that their sound daemons, like esd or artsd, don't make the process more complicated. Also, try your tests sometimes as root, to make sure it's not a permissions problem.

--
Kent West (westk@acu.edu)






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