[SOLVED] - No Onboard Sound

English Hardware
1

Greetings!

I am a completely new user to Suse. I am coming from PCLinux2009.

I tried searching but cannot locate any posts similar to my issue. I am unable to get ANY Linux distro to detect and use the onboard sound on my board.

Whats kind of weird is. I been experiencing this issue for 4 motherboards in a row! The common similarity these boards share is that they are all AM2 & using dualcore cpus. So far even on the PCLOS forums… I seem to be the only guy experiencing this bad luck. So, I was hoping Suse could break it.

I am using OpenSuse11.2. The motherboard is an ECS HT2000(ECS Web Site) running 2gb of DDR2 & an AMD Athlon™ 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4200+.

Im not sure what else to do at this point now. And I’ve already tried other distros and either could not get any sound or could not load the installations w/o getting a “kernel panic” error. So, Im running low on ideas and options. And Windows is a bit out of the question for me at this point.

2

Well, let us see if we can help. … I’ll propose a number of different things for you to try, … pointing out some guides and also obtaining some more information.

If in the end I fail, I will refer you to the openSUSE bug report mechanism, which gets the attention of a developer for the alsa sound driver (who works for SuSE-GmbH). If anyone can solve sound problem - he can.

The methodology I will more or less follow is documented here in a wiki I wrote: SDB:AudioTroubleshooting - openSUSE

So … lets start !!

Please, to help you get your basic sound working, please post in this sub-forum, providing in your post the following information:

/usr/sbin/alsa-info.sh

and select SHARE/UPLOAD and that will post the information to the web and give you a URL. Please provide the URL. Just the URL.

Please also provide - in a terminal, or xterm, or konsole, type: rpm -qa ‘alsa’ #and post output here

  • in a terminal, or xterm, or konsole, type: rpm -qa ‘pulse’ #and post output here
  • in a terminal, or xterm, or konsole, type: rpm -q libasound2 #and post output here
  • in a terminal, or xterm, or konsole, type: uname -a #and post output here
  • for openSUSE-11.2 or later, in a terminal, or xterm, or konsole, type: cat /etc/modprobe.d/50-sound.conf #and post output here

There is also guidance for new users here, in setting up their multimedia: Multi-media and Restricted Format Installation Guide - openSUSE Forums

3

WOAH THAT WAS FAST!:open_mouth:

Seriously! Thank you for that speedy reply Oldcpu!

Ok, heres the URL I was given:
http://www.alsa-project.org/db/?f=37f15b440b50029034d1158528351934ab885f36

And heres the other requested info…

-rpm -qa ‘alsa’-
alsa-plugins-1.0.21-3.3.i586
alsa-utils-1.0.21-3.1.i586
alsa-oss-1.0.17-25.2.i586
alsa-1.0.21-3.2.i586

-rpm -qa ‘pulse’-
libpulse-mainloop-glib0-0.9.19-2.3.i586
libxine1-pulse-1.1.16.1-7.6.i586
libpulse0-0.9.19-2.3.i586

-rpm -q libasound2-
libasound2-1.0.21-3.2.i586

-uname -a-
Linux Workstation 2.6.31.8-0.1-desktop #1 SMP PREEMPT 2009-12-15 23:55:40 +0100 i686 athlon i386 GNU/Linux

-cat /etc/modprobe.d/50-sound.conf-
options snd slots=snd-dummy

uniq.unknown_key:Dummy soundcard

alias snd-card-0 snd-dummy

Please let me know if theres anything else you need

4

That is really strange … I’ve never seen “snd-dummy” before.

Are you running this in some sort of virtual session?

5

I’m puzzling over the entry “dummy”. I did a search on the alsa web site and ended up with these hits

so clearly there is a driver for some Matrix device.

I looked at the mixer settings:
!!Amixer output
!!-------------

!!-------Mixer controls for card 0 [Dummy]

Card hw:0 ‘Dummy’/‘Dummy 1’
Mixer name : ‘Dummy Mixer’
Simple mixer control ‘Master’,0
Capabilities: volume cswitch
Front Left: 96 [97%] -1.20dB] Capture** [off]**
Front Right: 96 [97%] -1.20dB] Capture** [off]**
Simple mixer control ‘Synth’,0
Capabilities: volume cswitch
Front Left: 100 [100%] [0.00dB] Capture [off]
Front Right: 100 [100%] [0.00dB] Capture [off]
Simple mixer control ‘Line’,0
Capabilities: volume cswitch
Front Left: 0 [33%] -30.00dB] Capture [off]
Front Right: 0 [33%] -30.00dB] Capture [off]
Simple mixer control ‘CD’,0
Capabilities: volume cswitch
Front Left: 84 [89%] -4.80dB] Capture [off]
Front Right: 84 [89%] -4.80dB] Capture [off]
Simple mixer control ‘Mic’,0
Capabilities: volume cswitch
Front Left: -50 [0%] -45.00dB] Capture [off]
Front Right: -50 [0%] -45.00dB] Capture [off]What happens if you unmute the Master volume/capture control ?

Note, when testing if you have sound, please copy and paste the following speaker-test into a Gnome terminal or a kde konsole:

speaker-test -Dplug:front -c2 -l5 -twav
Note Linux is case sensitive, and “D” is not the same as “d”. To stop the above test, while the konsole/xterm has the mouse focus, press <CTRL><C> on the keyboard. Note you should check your mixer settings (kmix if using KDE, and alsamixer if using Gnome) to ensure that PCM and Master Volume are set around 95%. Once you have basic sound established you can back off to lower volume levels. Note the test for surround sound is different.

If that test yields errors (and its not uncommon to get errors there), try instead this more simple test: speaker-test -c2 -l5 -twavYou should hear a female voice saying ‘FRONT LEFT’, ‘FRONT RIGHT’ five times. Its quite common that one of those speaker tests will work and one will NOT work, so don’t be distressed if that is the case. IF that test gives sound, stop now, post that the sound test gives sound, and we will look at other possible causes for your applications not giving you the sound you want (such as missing codecs, using the wrong packaged version … etc … ).

Or alternatively, for testing the simple playback, use aplay program. Prepare a WAV file (which I arbitrarily called “somefile.wav” and simply run like:

aplay -vv somefile.wav

With the option -vv, aplay shows the verbose information of the PCM device, and a VU-peak meter during playing the file.

Try those speaker-tests as both a regular user, and also with root permissions. If you have a headset, try with your headset plugged in, and also with your headset not plugged in (for speakers).

6

No, Im not.

The “dummy” thing comes from me selecting it as an option when I was installing the system.

I was so lost for ideas of what to do, I picked the option when in the hardware setup as everything else was returning back “no sound found”.

7

Ok, then please delete the file /etc/modprobe.d/50-sound.conf . You will need root permissions to do that deletion.

Then reboot so as to give the kernel a chance to redetect your sound device.

Then after rebooting try testing your sound (using the test that I recommended). It probably still will not work.

Then go to YaST > Hardware > Sound and see if your sound device is selected. If it is then select it, and configure it in YaST. Please accept default settings.

Then test your sound again with the tests I proposed.

If that does not work, then please again post the output of the script:

/usr/sbin/alsa-info.sh
8

also, in addition to re-running the script, if that does not work, after a fresh reboot please run as a regular user in the /home/yourusername directory:

dmesg > dmesg.txt

and open the file dmesg.txt with a text editor, and then copy and paste the contents of that file to the pastebin site: PasteBin.be and press on “dump”. That will give you a URL. Please post that URL here. I want to see your PCs boot messages as to what alsa is doing when trying to configure the sound device.

9

I do not know about the error “no sound found”, but note there is a bug in KDE where it keeps reporting upon a boot that it can not find a sound device and it is falling back to another. Thats a bug and ignore that message for now.

10

Uuugh…-_-

This is seriously embarrassing.

Thank you for your help Oldcpu. But I believe I just solved the issue. A friend of mine over aim who has the same board(and had the same issues*) informed me to go into the “bios” and turn the HDAudio ON.

So now my sound is on and working.

To others who experience this same issue:
Check your bios and ensure that your audio settings are “on”. Reason I initially avoided that option was because a board I had whereas the sound worked. HDAudio started creating havoc with my system and try forcing my radeonHD card to output the sound. Luckily, that was not the case here.

So this issue is ressolved now. Thank you Oldcpu and I apologize for not catching this sooner=\

11

Great! Glad to read its working, and thankyou for sharing your solution.

The Linux world is now open again to try all sorts of distributions with sound. Enjoy your Linux experience.

12

What do I do now?

Do I add in to the thread’s topic, “Solved”?

13

Nothing to do now. Just enjoy your sound :slight_smile:

We do not normally put “solved” in a thread title, because that can break the links for NNTP users (where the title is used for the NNTP reply continuity). But in this case I’ll put solved in the title (at least I’ll try) and I ask that NNTP users do NOT reply to this solved thread.

14

Ah, ok then!

Thanks again!