Weird problem with Kmix and the Microphone

English Multimedia
1

Hi all.

Well, after a lot of testing trying to find the problem I have a lot of info, but no solution.

The system:
Default openSUSE 11.3 with KDE 4.4.4

The problem:
No Input Sound with arecord, skype, or any other software

The tests:
A lot, but this one was the one that get my attention:

First I shutdown ALSA and delete the file /etc/asound.state, then I delete all the Kmix configuration that was saved and then I start ALSA again. Then I start Kmix, and blam! The microphone works perfect … but …

When I reboot the machine, the mic stop working again, even when I leave everything intact. The weird thing is that when I got my Mic working, the Firefox and all audio was working perfect, even when the PCM channel didn’t show up. But when i reboot the PCM channel appear, and Firefox stays without sound until I level up the volume of the control.

So, i think that my mic problem has something related with the PCM showing or not.

Any help about how can i fix this? Its really annoying repeating the process of delete the asound.state every reboot just to get skype working :frowning:

Thanks in advance!

Cheers! :slight_smile:

2

Its possible your mixer settings are not being stored when you shut down?

Get your mic working, and then do a screenshot, saving the mixer settings. Also when the mic is working, run:

/usr/sbin/alsa-info.sh

and select to upload/share the information, and then store the URL provided (so you can get it later).

Then reboot and again run:

/usr/sbin/alsa-info.sh

and compare the two outputs from before rebooting and now.

Also try to reconfigure your mic using your previous screen shot as a guide.

Also, instead of deleting asound.state, iF you find restoring the mic settings does not work, try simply restarting alsa with:

su -c 'rcalsasound restart'

and then restart your mixer (simply type in a terminal ‘kmix’)

If you find that works, then what is likely is some application upon boot is seizing your audio device and refusing to share it fully and hence your mic is not working. If that appears to be the case, you can chase down what application has seized your audio device by looking at what files are open accessing the directories where the audio device is located in Linux … ie To determine what application is using one’s sound device, copy and paste the following into a terminal or a konsole (to list the open files (lsof)):

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

Note the syntax for “snd/*” is different from the other directories.

If one runs the above line at different times, when one’s mic is working and not working, one can learn better as to what the output means, and be better able to " point one’s finger " at the offending application that has seized the audio device.

3

Thank you oldcpu for your help! I do a lot of new testings founding this:

  • lsof shows knotify and kmix all the times.
  • If i delete the file /etc/asound.state at boot the problem disappears completely even when i restart. I place in /etc/init.d/boot.local an rm /etc/asound.state and the problem was solved.

So i think that i have to point the finger to that file. What do you think?

Thanks again.

4

I have never touched those files (except I have used /etc/init.d/boot.local at times). I’ve never had the need. So I can not offer any suggestions/comments there.

Did you try : " rcalsasound restart " with root permissions like I suggested ?

5

Of course, I did a lot of testing with your suggestions. I know those files from past experiences configuring Gentoo and ArchLinux, thats why I test removing that file always :stuck_out_tongue:

Well, happily the system its working :smiley:

Really thanks for all your help!