Sound Through Apps

well, i *thought* i had the audio working, but maybe not completely. i get sound when i play the test sound in YAST>Hardware>Sound>Other but if i try to play the same audio in the audio program, it's no go (same for trying to play a cd). any ideas on what i'm missing?

Pismo 500mHz
openSUSE 10.3
1GB ram
40GB HD

well, i *thought* i had the audio working, but maybe not completely. i get sound when i play the test sound in YAST>Hardware>Sound>Other but if i try to play the same audio in the audio program, it's no go[/b]

Typically that means you have a permissions problem. Add yourself (your user) to group audio.

You can do this in YaST > Security and Users > User Management .... select your user ... click on Edit > Details and under Groups select the "audio" group and then click accept in the lower right hand corner. Its pretty intuitive.

I can't recall, you may need to exit X windows (and then log in again) before you can see the affect.

thank you very much for the reply! i tried adding my user to the audio group as you suggested, but am still unable to get sound through any of the apps. also for some reason when i restart the computer, i have to go back and setup the audio again in YaST. strange, huh? anyway, thanks for the advice, and if you can think of anything else, please let me know.

-dan

Typically that means you have a permissions problem. Add yourself (your user) to group audio.

You can do this in YaST > Security and Users > User Management .... select your user ... click on Edit > Details and under Groups select the "audio" group and then click accept in the lower right hand corner. Its pretty intuitive.

I can't recall, you may need to exit X windows (and then log in again) before you can see the affect.
[/b]

You might try running the program(s) in question from the terminal - oftentimes, useful debugging output will be dumped there.

i tried adding my user to the audio group as you suggested, but am still unable to get sound through any of the apps. also for some reason when i restart the computer, i have to go back and setup the audio again in YaST. strange, huh? [/b]

You could try the following to get some more information ...

After booting your PC (before you have sound) type:

<span style="font-family:Courier New">lsmod | grep snd</span>

and compare the difference ... The idea here is to see if the sound modules loaded when you have no sound are the same as the ones when you have sound.

ok, i finally had some time to get back to this and run that command you told me about, oldcpu. when i ran the command before i had sound, i got nothing whatsoever. after deleting and reconfiguring sound, i got the following data returned when i ran the command:

dan@linux-9ibc:~> lsmod | grep snd
snd_pcm_oss 62400 0
snd_mixer_oss 21248 1 snd_pcm_oss
snd_seq 68320 0
snd_seq_device 9772 1 snd_seq
snd_powermac 51008 0
snd_pcm 100644 2 snd_pcm_oss,snd_powermac
snd_timer 28068 2 snd_seq,snd_pcm
snd 74516 7 snd_pcm_oss,snd_mixer_oss,snd_seq,snd_seq_device,s nd_powermac,snd_pcm,snd_timer
snd_page_alloc 12456 1 snd_pcm
soundcore 8868 1 snd
dan@linux-9ibc:~>

the question now is, what does that tell me? obviously something isn't loading, is there a way to get it to do that?

also i can't play a dvd and am having 3d problems, but those are for another thread and after the sound is working i guess. one step at a time, eh?

thank you very much for the time and effort you all have spent to help me. i really want to use linux and i believe openSuse to be the best package for me, but i just need some experience.

thanks again,
dan

when i ran the command before i had sound, i got nothing whatsoever. after deleting and reconfiguring sound, [/b]

Next time you reboot and don't have sound, try running in a konsole/xterm with root permissions (ie first type "su" (no quotes) and enter root password):

<span style="font-family:Courier New">rcalsasound restart</span>

that will restart your alsa. See if that gives you sound (instead of going to YaST first like you have been doing).

also i can't play a dvd and am having 3d problems[/b]

To play dvd you need libdvdcss2. I can't help with 3D, as I never touch it.

Typically that means you have a permissions problem. Add yourself (your user) to group audio.

You can do this in YaST > Security and Users > User Management .... select your user ... click on Edit > Details and under Groups select the "audio" group and then click accept in the lower right hand corner. Its pretty intuitive.

I can't recall, you may need to exit X windows (and then log in again) before you can see the affect.
[/b]

hello again oldcpu, i finally made it back to tell you that running the rcalsasound command does work just fine to get the sound going. now if theres just a way to do that automatically, i would be even happier. if not, i can live with it though.

on the libdvdcss2, i looked at the stuff i could find online but it was totally greek to me. i am a total linux moron, i will quickly admit. thanks for your help so far though. at least i have sound.

cedenburn, sorry but i tried the steps you quoted, or maybe i am just missing something. sorry i dont mean to be an idiot, but i am just new at linux.

i think if i could get over the learning curve to be able to get everything going myself, i would be sold on the linux world.

anyway, thanks again guys,

-dan

hello again oldcpu, i finally made it back to tell you that running the rcalsasound command does work just fine to get the sound going. now if theres just a way to do that automatically, i would be even happier. [/b]

budoka, I don't know the best way to restart your sound doing boot (as its clearly not happening correctly, and there could be various causes). But as an interim workaround, you could add "rcalsasound restart" (without the quotes) to the bottom of file:
/etc/init.d/boot.local

That will run that command toward the end of your boot process during every boot. If you ever figure out why alsa is not starting correctly, you can then remove that entry.

on the libdvdcss2, i looked at the stuff i could find online but it was totally greek to me. [/b]

To install libdvdcss2, try the following ... open a konsole and type:

su -c "rpm -Uvh http://download.videolan.org/pub/libdvdcss/1.2.9/rpm/libdvdcss2-1.2.9-1.i386.rpm"

Also make certain you have the latest libdvdread from Packman installed:
http://packman.links2linux.de/package/libdvdread