Sound driver trouble, Gstreamer? Alsa?

Welcome blackline.

What distribution are you using? I would guess it's Ubuntu.

When there are sound troubles sometimes running alsaconf may help. You usually need superuser permissions to run it though, so this is what you run: sudo alsaconf in a terminal. It is a rather straightforward program for detecting and setting up sound, so if something was messed up, alsaconf might fix it.

Otherwise, maybe you should just install whatever related to gstreamer you removed. If you are using Ubuntu you can easily search through the packages to see wether it is installed or not, so you could try searching for gstreamer and you might recognize a package you accidentally removed and install it back.

Let us know how it goes.

Thanks

Yes Im using Ubuntu, 6.06 to be exactly.

alsaconf didn't work, "command not found".

The thing is I have no idea what package I removed.

alsaconf sounds like it's in the package alsa-utils.

I have alsa-utils installed, havnt managed to start alsaconf, tried as root.

No alsaconf? If not then it must be missing. Maybe it is in another package and not alsa-utils?

Does it give you any errors when you start it up regarding sound or it's just quiet? Some error messages would be good to see to help determine what's the problem.

Maybe you could just try to remember what you uninstalled and install them back one by one, at least packages that seem like they could have anything to do with sound.

As I said, if I click the sound icon in the upper-right corner it says something like: "No GStreamer plugins or devices", it's in swedish so I cant give an exact translation.

Last thing I did before this happened was to uninstall everything related to totem, I did "sudo apt-get remove totem*", then I remember something about GStreamer being removed. Thats all I know.

Hmm, right, then it seems like the sound in Ubuntu is somehow interwined with gstreamer and totem.

You know, it's probably best you install totem again, at least to see if it will work then. Even if you keep it installed it's not like it's gonna waste that much space.

But this is getting me kind of curious about the way Ubuntu handles sound.

If you tell us what packages get installed as dependencies when you install totem again, we may be able to tell you which ones can be safely removed.

Hmm, you may have a go at installing the following Gstreamer packages. This list comes from a pretty much unaltered install:

gnome-media
gstreamer0.10-alsa
gstreamer0.10-esd
gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg
gstreamer0.10-gl
gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
gstreamer0-10-plugins-base
gstreamer0-10-plugins-base-a
gstreamer0.10-plugins-good
gstreamer0.10-tools
gstreamer0.10-x
gstreamer0.8-alsa
gstreamer0.8-audiofile
gstreamer0.8-cdparanoia
gstreamer0.8-dv
gstreamer0.8-dvd
gstreamer0.8-esd
gstreamer0.8-flac
gstreamer0.8-gnomevfs
gstreamer0.8-gsm
gstreamer0.8-hermes
gstreamer0.8-jpeg
gstreamer0.8-misc
gstreamer0.8-oss
gstreamer0.8-plugin-apps
gstreamer0.8-sdl
gstreamer0.8-speex
gstreamer0.8-tools
gstreamer0.8-theora
gstreamer0.8-vorbis
gstreamer0.8-x
libgstreamer0.10-0
libgstreamer0.8-0
libgstreamer-gconf0.8-0
libgstreamer-plugins0.8-0
libgstreamer-plugins0.8-dev
libgstreamer-plugins-base0.10
python-gst
python-gst0.10

Try installing some of these (maybe one at a time?) and seeing if things start working again.

dylunio

The thing is that I tried installing totem again without result.

I'm no expert on this but I looked in synaptic at the package "gnome-media" which contains "gnome-volume-control". The explaination on "gnome-volume-control" is: "GNOME GStreamer-based audio mixer."

So GStreamer seems to have to do with it all, in some way.

Since I did "apt-get remove totem*" I took everything with Totem, and I'm quite sure it wasn't the base Totem package that took away the dependencies causing this.

I had the newest of everything except for these that apt couldnt find:

gstreamer0-10-plugins-base-a

"E: Couldn't find package gstreamer0-10-plugins-base-a"

I just tried starting Totem from a terminal window, and got this:

"ALSA lib confmisc.c:672:(snd_func_card_driver) cannot find card '0'
ALSA lib conf.c:3493:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_card_driver returned error: No such device
ALSA lib confmisc.c:392:(snd_func_concat) error evaluating strings
ALSA lib conf.c:3493:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_concat returned error: No such device
ALSA lib confmisc.c:1072:(snd_func_refer) error evaluating name
ALSA lib conf.c:3493:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_refer returned error: No such device
ALSA lib conf.c:3962:(snd_config_expand) Evaluate error: No such device
ALSA lib pcm.c:2102:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM default
ALSA lib confmisc.c:672:(snd_func_card_driver) cannot find card '0'
ALSA lib conf.c:3493:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_card_driver returned error: No such device
ALSA lib confmisc.c:392:(snd_func_concat) error evaluating strings
ALSA lib conf.c:3493:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_concat returned error: No such device
ALSA lib confmisc.c:1072:(snd_func_refer) error evaluating name
ALSA lib conf.c:3493:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_refer returned error: No such device
ALSA lib conf.c:3962:(snd_config_expand) Evaluate error: No such device
ALSA lib pcm.c:2102:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM default"

It seems it can't recognize the device. Looks like you've somehow lost the device node for sound in /dev

I would suppose that requires (re)installation of sound drivers, which means alsa. I'm not sure, but maybe searching for all alsa related packages and installing that would help?

Otherwise it may just fail to initialize at startup for some reason. Hmm, anyone else has thoughts on this?

I reinstalled all Alsa-packages that I had installed using Synaptic. Still no result.

device nodes are handled by udev, so the brute force way would be to reinstall that

it doesn't make much sense though...

Actually Ive noticed that neither burning cd's nor importing pictures from my digital camera works any more either, all this starting at the same time.

That brings to a logical conclusion that something done at that same time is the cause and if you would know exactly what you did, you could revert it. So far we know you uninstalled totem and some other packages I assume (since you mentioned a clean up of what you didn't need). Then you installed totem again to see if it'll work, but it didn't. You don't have alsaconf, but alsa-utils is installed. Still, errors show that it may very well come down to the alsa problem (which is implied by the missing alsaconf).

So what's the deal? It must be something alsa-related that you removed or something you accidentally did in the process of removing those packages.

What about alsa libs, don't they have a separate package? Did you ever restart your computer since the problem came up? Maybe sound driver failed to come up for some reason at last boot, but now that you've put totem back maybe it will?

Also, did you try manually starting the alsa daemon?

It was after a reboot these errors accured.

How do I manually start the alsa daemon?

I have noticed one other thing after experementing. Before I login to Gnome the error message accours when I write the wrong password. This is not from the beeping pc speaker, it's from the sound card. So it's alive. Then I guess it has something to do with Gnome and how that handles sound.

Ive tried to go back in history and see what it was I erased. I only erased things related to totem and xine, and with them followed some dependencies. Thats all.

Have you tried running alsamixer?

Also, could you post the output of the lsmod | grep snd command and then the output of the lspci command just to make sure sound module is even loaded. You say you can hear the beep at load, but still, just in case.

Also I found some other steps you could try here: http://linux.iuplog.com/default.asp?item=94639

It's for older version of Ubuntu (hoary), but these steps may still be useful.

Then probably udev is broken. That's really bad and shouldn't happen by coincedence. Try reinstalling udev.

EDIT: scratch that. If the sound works before you log in to gnome, then it's probably gnome that is badly broken. What happens if you try to play a sound from the command line with the "play" command (you might need to install sox for this)?

$ alsamixer
alsamixer: function snd_ctl_open failed for default: No such device
_______________________________________________________________________________________

$ lsmod | grep snd
snd_ens1371 24672 0
gameport 15496 1 snd_ens1371
snd_rawmidi 25504 1 snd_ens1371
snd_seq_device 8716 1 snd_rawmidi
snd_ac97_codec 93088 1 snd_ens1371
snd_pcm_oss 53664 0
snd_mixer_oss 18688 1 snd_pcm_oss
snd_pcm 89864 3 snd_ens1371,snd_ac97_codec,snd_pcm_oss
snd_timer 25220 1 snd_pcm
snd 55268 8 snd_ens1371,snd_rawmidi,snd_seq_device,snd_ac97_codec,snd_pcm_oss,snd_mixer_oss,snd_pcm,snd_timer
soundcore 10208 1 snd
snd_page_alloc 10632 1 snd_pcm
snd_ac97_bus 2304 1 snd_ac97_codec

_______________________________________________________________________________________

$ lspci
0000:00:00.0 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C693A/694x [Apollo PRO133x] (rev c4)
0000:00:01.0 PCI bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C598/694x [Apollo MVP3/Pro133x AGP]
0000:00:07.0 ISA bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C686 [Apollo Super South] (rev 22)
0000:00:07.1 IDE interface: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C586A/B/VT82C686/A/B/VT823x/A/C PIPC Bus Master IDE (rev 10)
0000:00:07.2 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 10)
0000:00:07.4 SMBus: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C686 [Apollo Super ACPI] (rev 30)0000:00:0e.0 Ethernet controller: Accton Technology Corporation SMC2-1211TX (rev 10)
0000:00:0f.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV11 [GeForce2 MX/MX 400] (rev b2)
0000:00:10.0 USB Controller: NEC Corporation USB (rev 43)
0000:00:10.1 USB Controller: NEC Corporation USB (rev 43)
0000:00:10.2 USB Controller: NEC Corporation USB 2.0 (rev 04)
0000:00:11.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Agere Systems FW323 (rev 04)
0000:00:12.0 Multimedia audio controller: Ensoniq 5880 AudioPCI (rev 02)

I tried opening amarok as root, "with sudo amarok". There I got sound?!?!

:idea:

what is the output of

ls -l /dev/dsp

?

It seems your normal user doesn't have some necessary permissions, if it works as root. In that case tbuitenh's advice above is a must, to see permissions on /dev/dsp

You may also want to check if your in the 'audio' group. Check with groups

dylunio

crw-rw---- 1 root audio 14, 3 2006-09-07 13:41 /dev/dsp

So it's owned by root and is in audio group. Try this:

sudo chown <your-username> /dev/dsp

where <your-username> should be replaced with your Ubuntu user name of course.

alsa doesn't use /dev/dsp - and I'd assume ubuntu puts users in the audio group par défault, but I may be wrong on that one.

Worth mentioning is that I have reinstalled my system after a major crash. So my problem is "solved".

Thank you everyone that spent time trying to help me out.

Thanks for the update blackline. I am sorry we couldn't help more. It was quite a mysterious issue...

If you need any help with anything ever (with Free Software) we're here.