Sound funnies on Dell 1525

I have installed Suse 11 on my Dell 1525 laptop. It has an
82801H (ICH8) soundcard. I’m running KDE 3.5. When I boot the
computer I get no sound.

If I log in as root and run:

/etc/init.d/alasasound restart

I then get sound (but ONLY from the headphone jacks - no sound
out of the speakers.

But if I log out as root and log in with my personal account,
I no longer get sound (either from the speakers or from the
headphones). I can only get sound while running as root.
I tried running

sudo /etc/init.d/alsasound restart

from my account but I still get no sound.

[When it works, the sound is also relatively weak, but I see
from a previous post that this may require a LOT more
information, so I’ll hold off on that problem until this
one is fixed.]

Lots of things to try. I don’t know which is best. To start, add your regular user to group audio per step-6 in this guide:
SDB:AudioTroubleshooting - openSUSE How_To_Fix_a_Permissions_Problem
Then log out, and log back in (probably easiest to reboot).

Also, another command instead of:
sudo /etc/init.d/alsasound restart
is
su -c ‘rcalsasound restart’

and if you still have funny sound behaviour, please run the following script in an xterm/konsole while your laptop is connected to the internet:

wget http://home.cfl.rr.com/infofiles/tsalsa && su -c 'bash ./tsalsa'

and when prompted for a password enter your root password. That will give you a URL when it is done. Paste the URL here.

Also, in addition to that, please provide output of:
rpm -qa | grep alsa
rpm -qa | grep pulse
rpm -q libasound2
uname -a
cat /etc/modprobe.d/sound

I added me back to the audio group, but it seems to make
no difference. I still need to be root to get any sound.

The URL which came back from tsalsa is:

tsalsa.txt - nopaste.com (beta)

and the output you requested is:

frodo:~ # rpm -qa |grep alsa
alsa-1.0.16-39.1
alsa-plugins-1.0.16-57.1
alsa-oss-1.0.15-48.1
alsa-utils-1.0.16-35.1

frodo:~ # rpm -qa |grep pulse

frodo:~ # rpm -q libasound2
libasound2-1.0.16-39.1

frodo:~ # uname -a
Linux frodo 2.6.25.9-0.2-pae #1 SMP 2008-06-28 00:00:07 +0200 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux

frodo:~ # cat /etc/modprobe.d/sound

options snd slots=snd-hda-intel

u1Nb.VhUtPypIg0D:82801H (ICH8 Family) HD Audio Controller

alias snd-card-0 snd-hda-intel

OOPS – Let me try that URL again…

tsalsa.txt - nopaste.com (beta)

Or do I have to wrap it???

http://nopaste.com/p/aS35hU0qS

If this doesn’t work, I think I need directions
to post an internet address…

OK, then try this - change this file to:

options snd slots=snd-hda-intel
options snd-hda-intel model=3stack
# u1Nb.VhUtPypIg0D:82801H (ICH8 Family) HD Audio Controller
alias snd-card-0 snd-hda-intel

and in a konsole with root permissions restart your alsa with rcalsasound restart

OK – Some progress. I can now get sound with my account.
But there are still three remaining problems:

  1. I still have to restart alsasound when I first log in
    (either via etc/init.d/alsasound or via rcalsasound – the
    two files are identical).

  2. I still get nothing from the speakers

  3. The sound is very weak. I have set the master/pcm sliders
    to their maximum in alsamixer AND in Kmix AND in whatever
    sound application I’m using. Am I missing a volume control
    somewhere? Is it possible that the sound is so weak that
    I’m just not hearing the speakers in (2)?

I suppose these are in reverse order of importance to me. I
would really like to fix (3). The sound quality from the
speakers is very poor anyway, but they are useful sometimes.
And lastly the first problem has a relatively easy workaround.

This should not be necessary. But if it is, then simply put in /etc/init.d/boot.local the command (last line):
rcalsasound restart

… as for the other problems, … well … it looks to me like you made changes, and felt it not necessary to pass on the information (or you tried custom compilations, and felt it not necessary to tell me), so I no longer know what configuration is on your PC, so I can’t help anymore. At least not until you let me know what your configuration is again. For example, in reply to my “rpm -qa | grep alsa” request, you posted:

But the tsalsa script output tsalsa.txt - nopaste.com (beta) you posted has:

Alsa driver: 1.0.17        
dpkg path:           
Alsa utils: 1.0.16 

The above two are inconsistent, and only make sense if you updated alsa in between, or if you did a custom compile of alsa and did not say anything.

The configuration details are all interlinked. And a recommendation can be worthless if your configuration is different.

I can’t help with those unknowns. Its a waste of my time and yours.

Sorry. Maybe someone else can help.

Good Luck!

I apologize. I had installed another version of alsa last week thinking that might help. It didn’t. At some other point, I (thought) I removed it and reinstalled the distro version. I’m not certain when I did the reinstall relative to this thread. I thought it was before, but it might have been inadvertently done during. At this point, perhaps I should start over with the install (since it was a fresh install on a blank disk, that’s not too difficult). At that point, should I still have problems I’ll get back. But in any case, I thank you for your help so far.

I don’t think the audio warrants a re-install, but perhaps you have other reasons?

Installing an alsa update can be good, but in future I hope you advise when you change things, so that I don’t make a recommendation that makes things worse? Thanks!

Anyway, to get back on track with the sound, please re-run the following script in an xterm/konsole while your laptop is connected to the internet:

wget http://home.cfl.rr.com/infofiles/tsalsa && su -c 'bash ./tsalsa'

and when prompted for a password enter your root password. That will give you a URL when it is done. Paste the URL here.

Also, in addition to that, please provide output of:
rpm -qa | grep alsa
rpm -qa | grep pulse
rpm -q libasound2
uname -a
cat /etc/modprobe.d/sound

I assume this is now different from what was posted previous.

The URL is

http://nopaste.com/p/an463OuuV

and the answers are:

frodo:~ # rpm -qa |grep alsa
alsa-1.0.16-39.1
alsa-plugins-1.0.16-57.1
alsa-oss-1.0.15-48.1
alsa-utils-1.0.16-35.1

frodo:~ # rpm -qa |grep pulse

frodo:~ # rpm -q libasound2
libasound2-1.0.16-39.1

frodo:~ # uname -a
Linux frodo 2.6.25.9-0.2-pae #1 SMP 2008-06-28 00:00:07 +0200 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux

frodo:~ # cat /etc/modprobe.d/sound

options snd slots=snd-hda-intel
options snd-hda-intel model=3stack

u1Nb.VhUtPypIg0D:82801H (ICH8 Family) HD Audio Controller

alias snd-card-0 snd-hda-intel
fro

What does that mean? Does that mean a start up sound with externally connected speakers/headphone?

Do you need to do this BEFORE you get “sound with your account” ?

If you get nothing from the speakers, then what does the statement “I can now get sound with my account” mean? (ie same question as above).

What also “might” help, is for you do do a screen dump (capture) of your mixer, and then post that on a site such as ImageShack® - Image Hosting Sometimes the scripts do not adequately portray what you are seeing.

What are you doing for a sound test? I recommend you copy and paste the following into an xterm/konsole as a sound test:
speaker-test -Dplug:front -c2 -l5 -twav

Typically, when playing an application you simply need to move up to about 75% ‘Master’, ‘PCM’ and your application.

You could keep a record of your current mixer settings (maybe do a screen dump of each “tab”) and then try changing some of the switches, testing your sound after each change. ie switch OFF “IEC958”, switch OFF “analog loopback”, switch OFF “Swap Center/LFE”

I think at this point I had better clarify what is going on…

Upon boot, I do not get any sound out of the speakers or
heaphones unless I do an /etc/init.d/alsasound restart
(or an equivalent command).

Once I do that, I can get all the sounds I would expect from the headphones, but not from the speakers. That includes login/
logout sounds, web sites, etc.

The sound is very weak even though I have turned up the sliders
in alsamixer and kmix and, if appropriate, the volume control
for a particular application (real player, cd player, etc).

I’ll take a look at the other suggestions tomorrow (Monday).

Having that test made it a bit easier to run sliders up
and down to see what was happening. I had to crank up
the “front” slider in the alsamixer.

I now have reasonable sound in the headphones, and my guess
about the speakers was correct. The volume was SO low that
the speakers were on but inaudible.

Thanks VERY much for your help.

Great ! Congratulations and thank you for sharing your solution.