Question: PCI Sound Card/Red Hat 8

[Calum]

hello all, yes i do like to come here first with my woes...

right well, i have a celery 700, 128MB RAM, with C-Media PCI sound card, running red hat 8. section follows:

Code: [Select]

now this card is a bit funny.

here are the symptoms i have noticed so far:
when using GAIM, i have the choice of four methods of sound notification, they are: Console Beep, ESD, Internal & Command. Now i think only the first two are really sounds, the final one obviously means to run a command instead. Anyway, using ESD does NOT work. using Console Beep however does.
when using XMMS to play mp3s/oggs, sound works using the aRts driver but NOT with the eSound or OSS drivers.
when trying to play a CD - nothing. this happens with kscd and with cdp. It also happens when i try to play the CD with XMMS/aRts plugin, the setup that works for mp3s/oggs. the CD Players show the trackbar moving through the song but the VU meter does not show any 'sound' showing up at al (however the first thing i learnt about those meters in college is that VU stands for 'virtually useless').
Finally, when running sndconfig, all is well until i get to the 'play test sound' stage, whereupon sndconfig's nice blue screens dissapear and leave me hanging one line below a prompt like this:

Code: [Select]

and i have to ctrl-C out of it, test sound unplayed. one time i remember doing this four or five times, and the test sounds mysteriously played when i shut down the computer. Regrettably i did not note which services et c were being shut down at the time this happened.

Now can anybody help me in basically getting it all to work. games all playing sound, GAIM playing sound, CDs playing, mp3s playing, if possible i'd like to listen to CDs/mp3s or whatever and have GAIM be able to interrupt me to let me know somebody has messaged me.

Thanks in advance and so on. i did find this:
http://www.redhat.com/mailing-lists/sound-list/msg04190.html
which is a guy with a similar but *not* identical problem, however no solutions to that guy's problem seem to come up. i would search more (and probably will) but you know i have been a bit under the weather recently and can't keep my stamina up for long, so i thought i'd ask here first.

[Calum]

thanks so much.

does nobody have ANYTHING TO SAY????????

well since you all give a shit so much, i was just going to say that i can happily rip a CD to oggs using grip and then play it back using xmms, even though i cannot play the actual CD itself.

I suppose you're really interested to know that.

Maybe it's time to move on to a better forum for any technical type problems. this one seems like it's turning into more of a purely handbag fighting forum.

[voidmain]

Try this:

http://voidmain.kicks-ass.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=24&highlight=

[shuiend]

hey Calum have you tried grip for playing your cd's? That is the only thing that will play them for me.

[choasforages]

if arts is running and esd is not, arts is probably hoging the soundcard and esd can't run.

[Calum]

thanks, all.

void main, it looks like you came up with the answer. i'm a bit shaky though on what to do with that info. should i just follow the void main TM guide to kernel recompilation and somehow stick the info from that bugzilla report in there? i'm confused...

[Calum]

<sigh>
so now i have some bloody problem with the mixer. apparently:  

quote:I was not able to open your audio device.
Please check that you have permission to open /dev/mixer
and make sure you have sound support compiled into your kernel.

and not only that but:
 

quote:[calum@localhost calum]$ aumix
aumix:  error opening mixer
[calum@localhost calum]$ ls -al /dev/mixer
crwxr-xr-x    1 root     root      14,   0 Jan 22 11:53 /dev/mixer
[calum@localhost calum]$ su
Password:
[root@localhost calum]# aumix
[root@localhost calum]# (it worked fine)...

Can anybody help me get sound working again on this godsforsaken machine please?
thanks in advance as always...

[JH]

It just wants to get the full write access.
If mixer can't change anything it considers itself not quite a mixer.

[Zombie9920]

quote:Originally posted by JH:
It just wants to get the full write access.
If mixer can't change anything it considers itself not quite a mixer.

So in other words it would be working flawlessly if he was logged in as root?

[KernelPanic]

chmod +rw /dev/mixer

[Calum]

zombie, no it doesn't work either way, but i only get the mixer error when not root.

tux, do i need to make mixer writable to everybody? is that normal/secure?

[KernelPanic]

quote:Originally posted by Calum:
zombie, no it doesn't work either way, but i only get the mixer error when not root.

tux, do i need to make mixer writable to everybody? is that normal/secure?

I am not altogether sure, but remeber having to do the same to /dev/dsp on some setups to make it work. I doubt it's a big risk the worst that could happen is that a cracker could crank up your bass and annoy the old lady nextdoor.

My /dev/mixer has the following attributes:

Code: [Select]

maybe you could try chown calum:root /dev/mixer, not sure if it would work...

[choasforages]

ahh, but with a quick enough connection, or a fast enough system, the attacker could in theory if oyu had a mic plugged in, record the mic signals and send them over to his system, probably compressing them first. then agian, this is the kind of security problem only the NSA would be concerned with

[Interscope]

cd:
There's a little cable you often have to connect to your sound card if you want to hear sound coming from your cd player. It's a small thin cable. I forgot how it's called.

[Doogee]

quote:Originally posted by Interscope:
cd:
There's a little cable you often have to connect to your sound card if you want to hear sound coming from your cd player. It's a small thin cable. I forgot how it's called.

i beleive they call that the analog audio cable.