sound stop working after updating on asus k50in

weisuse · October 21, 2009, 1:50am

sound stopped working after i updated multimedia based on oldcpu’s guide. but the system login and logout sounds are still there. If i play youtube, there is no sound. I updated alsa based on soundtroublshooting page, didn’t help. here are the infos:

~/Desktop> speaker-test -c2 -l5 -twav

speaker-test 1.0.18

Playback device is default
Stream parameters are 48000Hz, S16_LE, 2 channels
WAV file(s)
ALSA lib pcm_dmix.c:1008:(snd_pcm_dmix_open) unable to open slave
Playback open error: -16,Device or resource busy
ALSA lib pcm_dmix.c:1008:(snd_pcm_dmix_open) unable to open slave
Playback open error: -16,Device or resource busy

Your ALSA information is located at http://www.alsa-project.org/db/?f=3537e7bb2c4d8df22952845697ee6af6295f88fb

Linux linux-wh0i 2.6.27.29-0.1-default #1 SMP 2009-08-15 17:53:59 +0200 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

~/Desktop> rpm -qa | grep alsa
alsa-utils-1.0.18-6.4
alsa-1.0.18-8.12.1
alsa-oss-32bit-1.0.17-1.37
alsa-driver-kmp-default-1.0.21.20091020_2.6.27.29_0.1-1.3
alsa-firmware-1.0.17-1.51
alsa-plugins-pulse-1.0.18-6.13
alsa-oss-1.0.17-1.43
alsa-plugins-1.0.18-6.13

~/Desktop> cat /etc/modprobe.d/sound
alias snd-card-0 snd-hda-intel
alias sound-slot-0 snd-hda-intel

weisuse · October 21, 2009, 1:54am

one more question: what is relation between alsa, pulseaudio and phonon? which one are we using and troubleshooting?

weisuse · October 21, 2009, 3:15am

update:
speaker-test is working: i can hear “front left” “front right”.
but still youtube and last.fm plays are silent.

oldcpu · October 21, 2009, 7:42am

Congratulations on sorting your sound with the speaker test !!

That pretty much shows basic sound is functioning. wrt youtube it could be a flash problem. Do you have flash-player installed? Keep that installed, but if you have libflashsupport installed, remove that. Restart firefox. Does it work now ?

weisuse · October 21, 2009, 8:28am

although speaker-test works, but youtube didn’t work. I thought might be flash related (which was working before multimedia packman update), or might be firefox-flash combo problem. So I use konqueror to try youtube, no luck either. OK，it’s not firefox. The video is fine with youtube, so i don’t think it’s flash problem.

At this point, i know: login/out music OK, speaker-test OK, amarok OK(yes!), youtube and lastfm SILENT (both flash). My theory was the speaker-test and amarok are using different sound system (pulseaudio??) from flash (alsa??). THis theory might be naive. But i do see the message right after logging in saying ALC662 not working… change to pulseaudio… something like that.

So i decided to play with yast-harware-sound setting. i deleted old configuration, re-added new one. But there is no MCP79, so used something close. That didn’t help. I continue to edit setting by changing model option based on the alc662 info you posted in another thread, until I change to asus-mode3. Now the youtube has SOUND!!! although I’m not sure it’s the model option who solved the problem, Does it make sense to you.

Just found out, after I used youtube, the speaker-test stopped, just hang at “0 - Front Left”, no sound no progress (even after I close the youtube page in firefox. How do I completely disconnect youtube from occupying the device?

It’s late here, I will find out tomorrow morning if everything still works.

Thanks.

oldcpu · October 21, 2009, 8:47am

There is a bug in openSUSE-11.1 that it gives false messages about sound not working and falling back … so one needs to take any such messages with a grain of salt.

It suggests 2 possibilities to me.

the asus-mode3 worked and it was what you needed, or
restarting alsa with either no model option specified, or with a reasonably accurate model option (asus-mode3 in this case) is what worked, but if you had restarted alsa with no model option it might also have worked.

If you wish to hit the nail with a hammer, type with root permissions “rcalsasound restart” and then restart your mixer. Restarting alsa should kill any processes that are accessing the audio.

Don’t forget the idea of removing libflashsupport if flash in particular gives you problems.

weisuse · October 21, 2009, 6:15pm

It suggests 2 possibilities to me.

the asus-mode3 worked and it was what you needed, or

restarting alsa with either no model option specified, or with a reasonably accurate model option (asus-mode3 in this case) is what worked, but if you had restarted alsa with no model option it might also have worked.

you are right with possibility#2.
This morning I boot the machine. Still the old problem (speaker-test fine, youtube silent). Then only thing I did was “rcalsasound restart” under root. That fixed the problem and youtube has sound immediately. It might not matter which model I chose (I haven’t change anything).

But still, when youtube starts to work, the speaker-test stopped working. As I explained before, speaker-test just hang there. Same is for Amarok.

again, restarting sound driver will fix it.

What should I do, so that I don’t have to restart sound everytime I log in to the system.

oldcpu · October 21, 2009, 7:13pm

We could setup your PC to run ‘rcalsasound restart’ every time it boots but IMHO thats not the way to go about this.

Instead IMHO logically what you need to do is figure out why sound is not working at any particular time.

First, some openSUSE sound basics … Sound-concepts - openSUSE … Linux sound servers/daemons in general do not share audio, but rather when one application is using the audio device, others can not share the device. The exceptions to this are applications that use the alsa API (not to be confused with the alsa driver) and recently pulse audio will also allow applications to share audio. However, pulse audio is buggy.

If two applications are both using the alsa API, they can play audio at the same time. If both are using OSS, or aRts or some other API then only one application at a time can use the audio.

So IMHO logically you need to determine what application is using the audio device when you are experiencing audio problems. The command I recommend you use for that is:

 lsof /dev/dsp* /dev/audio* /dev/mixer* /dev/snd/*

Run that command when you are happy with the audio. Copy and paste the output into a text file and save that information. Label it clearly so that you know what the circumstances were when you ran it.

Then when your sound is not behaving the way you expect, run that command again. Copy and paste the output into a text file. Label it clearly so that you know what the circumstances were when you ran it.

Do that as many times as required, and then compare the files. What application had seized your sound device when sound was not working properly ?

Once you have that information, you can proceed and take other measures. Things like changing the output audio mode to “alsa” from ‘audio’ or from ‘oss’ or from ‘pulse’ … etc …

Reference: SDB:AudioTroubleshooting - openSUSE - determining which application is using the sound device

weisuse · October 21, 2009, 7:48pm

Totally agree with you. I want to find out why too.

I don’t have “lsof”, instead I used ls or ls-l, is that OK?

ls-l /dev/dsp* /dev/audio* /dev/mixer* /dev/snd/*

crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 14, 4 2009-10-21 09:18 /dev/audio
crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 14, 3 2009-10-21 09:18 /dev/dsp
crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 14, 0 2009-10-21 09:18 /dev/mixer
crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 116, 7 2009-10-21 09:18 /dev/snd/controlC0
crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 116, 6 2009-10-21 09:18 /dev/snd/hwC0D0
crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 116, 5 2009-10-21 09:18 /dev/snd/pcmC0D0c
crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 116, 4 2009-10-21 10:23 /dev/snd/pcmC0D0p
crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 116, 3 2009-10-21 09:18 /dev/snd/pcmC0D1p
crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 116, 8 2009-10-21 09:18 /dev/snd/seq
crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 116, 2 2009-10-21 09:18 /dev/snd/timer

Right now the sound has been fine for speaker-test, amarok and youtube (one after one test), since my 2nd rcalsasound restart. I will investigate more and save the info when the problem occurs again.

Things like changing the output audio mode to “alsa” from ‘audio’ or from ‘oss’ or from ‘pulse’ … etc …

I have no idea about these changes yet, but will find out with time.

thanks for the support, really helpful and keep me from thinking about switching to ubuntu. I have ubuntu-9.04-64bits for my desktop, which is running pretty well, but never able to make the flash work well with firefox (need often restart firefox to make flash work again, although I installed flash 64 alpha). Here this suse-64 is much better for the flash-firefox combo.

oldcpu · October 21, 2009, 7:58pm

I don’t know. Why not install lsof ? Simply (with root permissions):

zypper install lsof

oldcpu · October 21, 2009, 8:01pm

I just looked at that

ls-l /dev/dsp* /dev/audio* /dev/mixer* /dev/snd/*

IMHO it does not help. or rather it is much more confusing than lsof line I gave. Install lsof.

oldcpu · October 21, 2009, 8:10pm

Some detail, lsof is a command meaning “list open files”, which is used in many Unix-like systems to report a list of all open files and the processes that opened them. lsof - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Its a very handy command

*< oldcpu ducks as the GUI devotee’s send disapproval vibes his way for suggesting a diagnostic command line instead of some unknown gui approach > *

weisuse · October 21, 2009, 8:30pm

lsof installed.

here is the output. So far the sound is working well. cheers.

linux-wh0i:/home/wzhou/Desktop # lsof /dev/dsp* /dev/audio* /dev/mixer* /dev/snd/*
lsof: WARNING: can’t stat() fuse.gvfs-fuse-daemon file system /home/wzhou/.gvfs
Output information may be incomplete.
COMMAND PID USER FD TYPE DEVICE SIZE/OFF NODE NAME
npviewer. 4773 wzhou 13u CHR 116,4 0t0 18725 /dev/snd/pcmC0D0p
pulseaudi 5059 wzhou 20u CHR 116,7 0t0 18746 /dev/snd/controlC0
pulseaudi 5059 wzhou 27u CHR 116,7 0t0 18746 /dev/snd/controlC0
kmix 5658 wzhou 12u CHR 116,7 0t0 18746 /dev/snd/controlC0

oldcpu · October 21, 2009, 8:46pm

You can run lsof as a regular user.

Here is an example from my PC with NO sound playing.

oldcpu@hal1000:~> lsof /dev/dsp* /dev/audio* /dev/mixer* /dev/snd/*
COMMAND    PID USER   FD   TYPE DEVICE SIZE/OFF NODE NAME
pulseaudi 5559  oldcpu   20u   CHR  116,9      0t0 5411 /dev/snd/controlC0
pulseaudi 5559  oldcpu   27u   CHR  116,9      0t0 5411 /dev/snd/controlC0
pulseaudi 5559  oldcpu   32u   CHR  116,4      0t0 5351 /dev/snd/controlC1
kmix      5591  oldcpu   10u   CHR  116,9      0t0 5411 /dev/snd/controlC0
kmix      5591  oldcpu   11u   CHR  116,4      0t0 5351 /dev/snd/controlC1

and then when playing an .mp4 file with smplayer

oldcpu@hal1000:~> lsof /dev/dsp* /dev/audio* /dev/mixer* /dev/snd/*
COMMAND    PID USER   FD   TYPE DEVICE SIZE/OFF NODE NAME
pulseaudi 5559  oldcpu   20u   CHR  116,9      0t0 5411 /dev/snd/controlC0
pulseaudi 5559  oldcpu   27u   CHR  116,9      0t0 5411 /dev/snd/controlC0
pulseaudi 5559  oldcpu   32u   CHR  116,4      0t0 5351 /dev/snd/controlC1
kmix      5591  oldcpu   10u   CHR  116,9      0t0 5411 /dev/snd/controlC0
kmix      5591  oldcpu   11u   CHR  116,4      0t0 5351 /dev/snd/controlC1
mplayer   7783  oldcpu  mem    CHR  116,6          5390 /dev/snd/pcmC0D0p
mplayer   7783  oldcpu    6r   CHR  116,2      0t0 4907 /dev/snd/timer
mplayer   7783  oldcpu    7u   CHR  116,6      0t0 5390 /dev/snd/pcmC0D0p
mplayer   7783  oldcpu    8u   CHR  116,9      0t0 5411 /dev/snd/controlC0

and then after that finished, here is firefox playing a flash video I uploaded: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuZ7EmktTMc)

oldcpu@hal1000:~> lsof /dev/dsp* /dev/audio* /dev/mixer* /dev/snd/*
COMMAND    PID USER   FD   TYPE DEVICE SIZE/OFF NODE NAME
pulseaudi 5559  oldcpu   20u   CHR  116,9      0t0 5411 /dev/snd/controlC0
pulseaudi 5559  oldcpu   27u   CHR  116,9      0t0 5411 /dev/snd/controlC0
pulseaudi 5559  oldcpu   32u   CHR  116,4      0t0 5351 /dev/snd/controlC1
kmix      5591  oldcpu   10u   CHR  116,9      0t0 5411 /dev/snd/controlC0
kmix      5591  oldcpu   11u   CHR  116,4      0t0 5351 /dev/snd/controlC1
npviewer. 7816  oldcpu  mem    CHR  116,6          5390 /dev/snd/pcmC0D0p
npviewer. 7816  oldcpu   12u   CHR  116,2      0t0 4907 /dev/snd/timer
npviewer. 7816  oldcpu   13u   CHR  116,6      0t0 5390 /dev/snd/pcmC0D0p
npviewer. 7816  oldcpu   14u   CHR  116,9      0t0 5411 /dev/snd/controlC0

… so in the example you gave, I see “npviewer” present which suggests to me you have firefox running? or you had it running and it has not let go of the video yet.

weisuse · October 21, 2009, 9:30pm

Here is a quick series I did:

It looks like just closing the tab won’t turn off the flash, instead I need to quit the firefox to be able to release the device if I want to use it with another program (let’s say amarok). Am I right?

last.fm running in firefox (using flash)

~/Desktop> lsof /dev/dsp* /dev/audio* /dev/mixer* /dev/snd/*
COMMAND PID USER FD TYPE DEVICE SIZE/OFF NODE NAME
npviewer. 4773 wzhou 13u CHR 116,4 0t0 18725 /dev/snd/pcmC0D0p
pulseaudi 5059 wzhou 20u CHR 116,7 0t0 18746 /dev/snd/controlC0
pulseaudi 5059 wzhou 27u CHR 116,7 0t0 18746 /dev/snd/controlC0
kmix 5658 wzhou 12u CHR 116,7 0t0 18746 /dev/snd/controlC0

close the tab

lsof /dev/dsp* /dev/audio* /dev/mixer* /dev/snd/*
COMMAND PID USER FD TYPE DEVICE SIZE/OFF NODE NAME
npviewer. 4773 wzhou 13u CHR 116,4 0t0 18725 /dev/snd/pcmC0D0p
pulseaudi 5059 wzhou 20u CHR 116,7 0t0 18746 /dev/snd/controlC0
pulseaudi 5059 wzhou 27u CHR 116,7 0t0 18746 /dev/snd/controlC0
kmix 5658 wzhou 12u CHR 116,7 0t0 18746 /dev/snd/controlC0

speaker-test hang

quit firefox

~/Desktop> lsof /dev/dsp* /dev/audio* /dev/mixer* /dev/snd/*
COMMAND PID USER FD TYPE DEVICE SIZE/OFF NODE NAME
pulseaudi 5059 wzhou 20u CHR 116,7 0t0 18746 /dev/snd/controlC0
pulseaudi 5059 wzhou 27u CHR 116,7 0t0 18746 /dev/snd/controlC0
kmix 5658 wzhou 12u CHR 116,7 0t0 18746 /dev/snd/controlC0

speaker-test working

restart firefox and youtube (dragon and phoenix)

lsof /dev/dsp* /dev/audio* /dev/mixer* /dev/snd/*
COMMAND PID USER FD TYPE DEVICE SIZE/OFF NODE NAME
pulseaudi 5059 wzhou 20u CHR 116,7 0t0 18746 /dev/snd/controlC0
pulseaudi 5059 wzhou 27u CHR 116,7 0t0 18746 /dev/snd/controlC0
kmix 5658 wzhou 12u CHR 116,7 0t0 18746 /dev/snd/controlC0
npviewer. 6258 wzhou 14u CHR 116,4 0t0 18725 /dev/snd/pcmC0D0p

oldcpu · October 21, 2009, 9:45pm

I think so.

It looks like firefox opens the flash app npviewer to play a video, and it remains open until firefox itself is completely closed. Until then, it will not give up the audio device. Note if you check the preferences/settings menu of various multimedia players, you may find a menu item allowing you to select the output module. If you can set that to alsa (advanced linux sound architecture) then do so, as the alsa API will share the audio. I don’t know how to do this in firefox.

weisuse · October 21, 2009, 9:45pm

now I reboot (didn’t quit firefox), after started, all the pages in firefox including youtube automatically loaded and there is NO sound for youtube. BUT if I try amarok, it’s fine. So the amarok or related something is occupying the device. Here is the lsof:

lsof /dev/dsp* /dev/audio* /dev/mixer* /dev/snd/*
COMMAND PID USER FD TYPE DEVICE SIZE/OFF NODE NAME
kmix 3891 wzhou 11u CHR 116,7 0t0 4262 /dev/snd/controlC0
pulseaudi 3928 wzhou mem CHR 116,4 4244 /dev/snd/pcmC0D0p
pulseaudi 3928 wzhou 20u CHR 116,7 0t0 4262 /dev/snd/controlC0
pulseaudi 3928 wzhou 25u CHR 116,7 0t0 4262 /dev/snd/controlC0
pulseaudi 3928 wzhou 26u CHR 116,4 0t0 4244 /dev/snd/pcmC0D0p
pulseaudi 3928 wzhou 27u CHR 116,7 0t0 4262 /dev/snd/controlC0

So question will be how to release the device?

oldcpu · October 21, 2009, 9:51pm

It looks to me that pulse audio is the offending package.

Go to Amarok > Settings > Configure Amarok > Engine > Configure Output Engine > Outplug-in … ensure you have “alsa” selected and not “pulseaudio”. That is for amarok-1.4.10. You may have a different Amarok version? From now on leave it set to ‘alsa’.

weisuse · October 21, 2009, 10:38pm

It looks to me that pulse audio is the offending package.

Go to Amarok > Settings > Configure Amarok > Engine > Configure Output Engine > Outplug-in … ensure you have “alsa” selected and not “pulseaudio”. That is for amarok-1.4.10. You may have a different Amarok version? From now on leave it set to ‘alsa’.
Reply With Quote

I have amarok-1.4.10. Its current engine is gstreamer/yauap engine. THe other available one is xine engine. I didn’t see alsa.

oldcpu · October 22, 2009, 2:22am

Did not see alsa ? Can you look again ?

From my PC:
http://thumbnails19.imagebam.com/5321/9f64aa53201346.gif](http://www.imagebam.com/image/9f64aa53201346)

Edit - I figure you did not bother to read my post? … even though I took the time to precisely type the menu to follow: