The sound itself always works fine on my wife’s laptop, but it doesn’t detect the usb mic, and in Kmix or Pulseaudio it lists a Null device. I found that if I go into YaST and reconfigure the sound card, it then displays correctly in Kmix and Pulseaudio volume control, and detects the usb mic correctly.
Problem solved, except after a reboot the sound is again displayed as a null device until you reconfigure the sound card in YaST again. Is there a way to “save” this configuration so it doesn’t need to be reconfigured every time she wants to use the USB mic?
I went through a bunch of the audio troubleshooting guides, but couldn’t find this problem. Any help would be appreciated.
Sound card is listed as “82801G (ICH7 Family) High Definition Audio” is YaST, and she is running 11.1.
Its possible you need to apply an audio model to force the configuration at boot. Can you provide some more information?
For openSUSE-11.1, you can do that, with your laptop connected to the internet, by opening a gnome-terminal or a kde konsole and twice copy and paste the following into that terminal/konsole
/usr/sbin/alsa-info.sh
Run it the 1st time with root permissions. It will ask if you wish to do an update of the script. Select YES.
Then run it again (as either a regular user or as root). This time it will diagnose your PC’s hardware and software configuration for audio, and it will post its output on the Internet/web. It will give you the URL of the web site. Please post that URL here. JUST the URL.
Also, please copy and paste the following commands one line at a time into a gnome-terminal or a konsole and post here the output: rpm -qa | grep alsa
rpm -qa | grep pulse
rpm -q libasound2
uname -a
cat /etc/modprobe.d/sound… with that information I may be able to make a recommendation.
Also, do NOT waste too much time on this. Simply post on our forum if you get stumped, and continue to look for help that way.
Note, I am on vacation, so it may be 3 to 4 days before I reply.
Freya:/home/christina # uname -a
Linux Freya 2.6.27.29-0.1-pae #1 SMP 2009-08-15 17:53:59 +0200 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux
Freya:/home/christina # cat /etc/modprobe.d/sound
options snd slots=snd-hda-intel
# u1Nb.gRjQurT2Rl5:82801G (ICH7 Family) High Definition Audio Controller
alias snd-card-0 snd-hda-intel
I don’t know if it makes a difference, but I ran all these when things were “not working” (IE the sound had not been re-configured in YaST after rebooting.) If any of these commands need to be run after re-configuring, please let me know.
Thanks again for responding, and I hope you enjoy your vacation.
I note a 32-bit openSUSE-11.1 with the 2.6.27.29 pae kernel running on an HP Pavilion dv5000 with a CX20551(waikki) hardware audio codec. The CX20551 I believe used to be called the CX5047 before a name change.
Where the former in particular suggests there may be a fix for some headphone and master volume setting problem in the CX20551.
Searching the alsa-configuratin.txt file, I note this for the CX5047:
Conexant 5047
laptop Basic Laptop config
laptop-hp Laptop config for some HP models (subdevice 30A5)
laptop-eapd Laptop config with EAPD support
test for testing/debugging purpose, almost all controls
can be adjusted. Appearing only when compiled with
$CONFIG_SND_DEBUG=y
which suggests there are some model options that can be forced if necessary for the CX5047, BUT you note that works fine, and it is only the USB mic that does not function, and hence I do not recommend any changes there.
I do not see the USB mic in the script output. Was it plugged in when you ran the script? I needs to be plugged in when the script is run.
I have read that some users require that the mic be plugged in when openSUSE is booted, in order for the mic to be recognized. Maybe you could try that.
Upon further testing, I think it may be related to pulseaudio. Skype is the program we are trying to get the mic to work with, and I’ve found that the sound itself doesn’t work in Skype unless I run the config in YaST first. (After running the sound config in YaST, skype works great with both sound and mic.) I’ve read that Skype uses pulseaudio, and since the sound works perfectly otherwise I figure maybe that’s part of the issue?
Is there a different way to “lock” pulseaudio settings once they’re configured?
I haven’t tried plugging the usb mic in when booting yet because it’s probably just as simple to run the sound config when needed. (The mic/webcam is shared between two computers.)
Thanks again, I appreciate you getting back to me so quickly.
and in particular use this test from a terminal when talking into the mic:
** arecord -vv -fdat foo.wav**
where “foo.wav” is some arbitrary name/file that you pick to save the recording to a wav file.
OK, as long as that works, but I note in the script in your last post the USB device was NOT detected. I have a friend back in the continent where I used to live, who is struggling with his USB mic under openSUSE, and he advised me the openSUSE-11.1 automount for USB mics does not work well.
It should be a control in your mixer. In kmix, for example, one can select which audio card one is trying to tune, and then add controls as appropriate (via a channel menu item) to provide the needed control. I’m not a gnome user so I can not say much about alsamixer.
You can also use amixer. If you type “man amixer” you can learn more about its controls. For example, “amixer help” gives a good summary of the amixer syntax. “amixer scontrols” gives a good summary of the various controls that can be adjusted with amixer.