Sound Stopped Working

wylbur · August 27, 2020, 3:43am

Running SUSE LEAP 15.1 KDE and sound stopped working after some update.

So I dropped in the LEAP 15.1 KDE LIVE DVD and booted from it and tested the sound and it works.

I did an update install and that took me to 15.2 and I have the same problem, no sound.

The driver is: snd_hda_intel (YaST2 Hardware info).

Hardware shows: Family 17h (models 00h-0fh) HD Audio Controller AND
GK208 HDMI/DP Audio Controller.

I’ve noticed that others are having similar issues.

Something I need to know about repositories? I got the impression there maybe some issue there.

tanker_bob · August 28, 2020, 10:29pm

Did you try to reinstall the sound driver? You may also want to reinstall the Pulse sound system. Maybe the update corrupted some of the driver files or deleted one in error.

deano_ferrari · August 29, 2020, 12:52am

That is unlikely to resolve the issue.

Instead, I would advise the OP to read our Audio_troubleshooting guide. More defintivie information is required in order for anyone to help you. Running the ‘alsa-info.sh’ diagnostic script will help collect this information, and it can upload that report to an online server. Share the link that it provides here so that others can review it and advise further.

vinylninja · August 29, 2020, 12:57am

You can try to see if your sound server, in this case pulseaudio, is running:

ps -C pulseaudio

If not then restart the service:

 systemctl --user restart pulseaudio.service

deano_ferrari · August 29, 2020, 1:04am

Yes, and if that doesn’t do the trick, then removing the existing user-config…

rm -rf ~/.config/pulse/

and restarting pulseaudio may be helpful.

oldcpu · August 29, 2020, 7:13am

Further to the excellent advice above - when you say ‘sound doesn’t work’ - could you tell us what your criteria is for stating such? Sometimes that can point to the problem.

Also, be certain your mixer is properly configured (alsamixer is a very basic yet powerful app for that), and also (via application pavucontrol (pulse audio volume control)) ensure you have pulse audio properly configured for the application and for the audio device you are attempting to use. Note that pulse audio provides the capability to tune audio on a per device and per application basis. So a common mistake for users is to have pulse audio misconfigured such that it has applications directing their audio output to a device not in use.

wylbur · August 31, 2020, 2:12am

Was working, meaning that I could get audio out of Youtube, or other sites that have audio. Or an MP4 that was sent to me. Not working means I can get no audio at all. And by going into Yast, I can’t even configure it it.

Using a SUSE LEAP 15.1 Live KDE CD/DVD I had audio working: As in, I had sound and could adjust volume, etc. Not working means that I could not get any sound to play.

Is this really that difficult of a concept given my explanation of what happened, what I did to correct it, and what I did to test?

To address another poster – I tried zypper, and things failed – some problem with a repository – bad signature?

So I’m not really impressed with the do all/be all fix when the very first time I use it, the system is borked. And now I have to go clean up Yast and the repository problems

I do appreciate the help, but when you read what I posted, and the upgrade install failed to solve the problem, and the problem started after some security patch (multiple put on, no idea which one caused), this was not a problem with a first time install system. And it is not a problem of the user’s making when the upgrade also fails to solve the issue.

Meanwhile, I will get back to this, I am currently dealing with deadlines for a presentations I have to do over the next 3 week.

BTW – My day job is z/OS and z/VM (Mainframes running Linux guests). I am not a Linux admin. I just take care of the environments under which the Linux for z runs.

Regards,
Wylbur

deano_ferrari · August 31, 2020, 2:21am

Seeing as you haven’t supplied any requested definitive information at all, and with only a vague “no sound” description, no fellow openSUSE user (we’re all volunteers) could do anything other than speculate here anyway.

oldcpu · August 31, 2020, 8:20am

Assuming your sound is still not working, maybe on the GNU/Linux PC running the openSUSE OS when sound is not working, could you run a diagnostic script, that will provide us more information as to your PC’s sound configuration?

ie open up an xterm/konsole, with PC connected to the internet, and as a regular user type the following command:


/usr/sbin/alsa-info.sh

select UPLOAD/SHARE when prompted. Let the script run to completion. When its complete in the xterm / konsole you should see something like:


Your ALSA information is located at http://alsa-project.org/db/?f=somenumber
Please inform the person helping you.

Post here the http link … ie : http://alsa-project.org/db/?f=somenumber

That will hopefully provide us some information in which we can then use to give you a suggestion to address the sound stopped working problem.

deano_ferrari · August 31, 2020, 9:47am

That was already suggested back in post #3. The OP has chosen the ‘theatrical’ approach which does not encourage those that could help to help.

wylbur · September 21, 2020, 12:22am

So I reset the stage, since this has been declared a theatrical operation… I was finally able to get back to this problem.

I have installed LEAP 15.1 from a DVD and did not allow Internet connections so that it could not updated repositories. This was done this way because the original install had the sound working, but some maint that was put on (with a bunch of security patches) caused me to not have sound. Sound was not working.

At this point, I pulled up a web page that contains a class I need to take. I now have sound, and can hear the instructor. I pulled up an mp3 file and VLC played it just fine, sound was OK.

Then I went to TuneIn and picked Radio Arabella (Muenchen) and it plays just fine, I can hear it.

What diagnostics would you like, before I put on any maint? Because, as i said, maint (security stuff) was put on and sound stopped working.

Also, I did not have to go through the installation stuff that was recommended because the install of LEAP 15.1 has all the needed items for sound to just work right from boot up after the install.

Why did I just do a re-install? Well one of the zypper commands resulted in me having a broken repository. So rather than trying to fix this and the other items I’ve hit, it was better for me to start over.

oldcpu · September 21, 2020, 4:55pm

Glad to read sound is working for you again.

I think I good idea, with sound working, is to run the diagnostic script I noted above. It creates a good record of your alsa and some other aspects of our PC’s configuration … which we can use as a functioning baseline to compare against any future changes.

This thread has already posted above how to do this … which was run this diagnostic script in an xterm or konsole as a regular user, with your PC connected to the Internet:


/usr/sbin/alsa-info.sh

select UPLOAD/SHARE when prompted. Let the script run to completion. Post here the URL that is provided at the end, when the script completes. That will then have a baseline of your audio configuration stored (when audio working) for future comparison.

wylbur · September 22, 2020, 12:05am

Ran the script. Accepted the update, and the update failed to execute (probably because I did not run it as root so it couldn’t create the output “folder”).

Meanwhile, here is the URL it listed: http://alsa-project.org/db/?f=8c536d304ab33d8a83fb884bad133bdcafae7369

oldcpu · September 22, 2020, 4:57pm

OK, thanks. I note this is your baseline, and that sound works with that configuration.

I want to caution you about something in that configuration to be careful about … Note this in the aplay:


!!Aplay/Arecord output
!!--------------------

APLAY

**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 3: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 7: HDMI 1 [HDMI 1]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: Generic [HD-Audio Generic], device 0: ALC892 Analog [ALC892 Analog]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: Generic [HD-Audio Generic], device 1: ALC892 Digital [ALC892 Digital]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

Most users have their sound connected to an analog output. In your case the analog output is “card 1”, “device 0” (also referred to as hw:1,0).

By default, GNU/Linux and hence openSUSE sends sound to card-0, and not card-1. Hence nominally your sound will be sent to an HDMI device.

What many users do in such a case, is run the application ‘pavucontrol’ (pulseaudio volume control) to tune the sound with pulse audio. Pulse audio provides the capability to direct audio from an application to any given output device on a per application basis. ie its entirely possible to have one application send sound to card-0 and have another application send sound to card-1. Obviously if no speaker is associated with card-0, then there will be no sound from that application. Hence it is important in such a case to use ‘pavucontrol’ to tune one’s audio appropriately.

My apologies if you know this already and I am wasting your time in reading this, but sometimes users are not aware of this - and if not aware, its entirely possible after an update, that you could run into this problem, where audio is sent from your application of choice, to a sound device that has no speaker connected - in which case launching ‘pavucontrol’ should give you the capability to appropriately redirect the sound output.

One other note on your configuration:


Simple mixer control 'Headphone',0
  Capabilities: pvolume pswitch
  Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right
  Limits: Playback 0 - 64
  Mono:
  Front Left: Playback 0 [0%] -64.00dB] [off]
  Front Right: Playback 0 [0%] -64.00dB] [off]

I note you have your headphones disabled, and I assume that is your intent?

oldcpu · September 22, 2020, 4:59pm

That is correct. If you wish to update the script, you can run it with root permissions.

However if you wish to give the correct user configuration for sound, then it is important it be run as a regular user.

dcurtisfra · September 23, 2020, 11:03am

Hmmm …

What I’ve found is, that the following points need to be addressed:

In the Pulse Audio FAQ, the point about user membership in the “audio
” group «type “groups” from a user CLI to check» – <https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/PulseAudio/FAQ/#index26h3>. 1. In the openSUSE “Pulseaudio
” SDB “Hints and tips” section, “PulseAudio Daemon Fails to Start after Reinstallation” – <https://en.opensuse.org/SDB:Pulseaudio>:

The content of ~/.config/pulse/ …

The most frequently used repair I use, is to logout, login via a VT (tty1…6) and remove the contents of ~/.config/pulse/ and then, login via the KDE Plasma GUI again …