[Lancaster] Re: debian woody (is:) ) sound.

[Ken Hough]

Andy,

After two successive hard days out on the fells, I feel shattered today=20
and so decided to try out your suggestions re sound under Debian.

The good news is that I've got a Soundblaster 5.1 card running , but it=20
wasn't easy. I know the sound card config is ok, because after adding my =

user account to group 'audio', I get intro music on starting KDE.

I managed to load 'aptitude'. 'synaptic' is not on the CD. I looked for=20
'alsa-base', etc, but there's no 'asla' stuff. Instead I found=20
'sndconfig' (uses OSS) which managed to set up the sound card and play=20
Linus' Thorvalds melodious tones. 'lsmod' showed modules 'emu10k1',=20
'sound', 'soundcore' and 'ac97_codec' were loaded.

I couldn't discover any way to use 'aptitude' to scan the contents of=20
the CD archive for specific items (as I can with YAST -- even using wild =

cards) so it was a pain to search manually. I must be missing something=20
here.

Anyway, I could not find the likes of 'kmix' or 'kscd' or any command=20
line equivalents and so could not use the sound card. I tried via=20
'gnome', but  neither the mixer nor the CD player applets worked.

I will have another look soon, after the headache subsides. 'aptitude'=20
is a help in getting into Debian, but at first, not easy to use.

Thanks for your help.

Ken Hough

andy baxter wrote:
> The first thing to try to get sound working is:
>=20
> - make sure you have a copy of the aptitude package manager, rather tha=
n=20
> dselect, which is awkward to use. synaptic is also good if you want an =

> X11 package manager. you can install both of these by typing:
> 'apt-get install aptitude synaptic' as root.
> - start aptitude.
> - do /alsa to search for the alsa packages (\ to go to next item).
> - mark alsa-base and alsa-utils for install (+). You also want either a=
=20
> binary alsa-modules package to match your installed kernel version (e.g=
=2E=20
> alsa-modules-2.4.18-686), or the alsa-source package if you want to=20
> compile it yourself. Mark one of these for install as well (+).
> - press 'g' twice to start installing the packages.
> - Once they have been unpacked, the installation script should ask you =

> which driver you need for your sound card, and a few other questions.
>=20
> Try doing lsmod as root to see if the alsa modules have been loaded.=20
> Mine looks like this (just the sound modules shown).
> snd_seq_oss            32000  0
> snd_seq_midi_event      6272  1 snd_seq_oss
> snd_seq                51472  4 snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_midi_event
> snd_pcm_oss            49124  0
> snd_mixer_oss          17408  2 snd_pcm_oss
> snd_intel8x0           29444  1
> snd_ac97_codec         61444  1 snd_intel8x0
> snd_pcm                85348  2 snd_pcm_oss,snd_intel8x0
> snd_timer              21636  2 snd_seq,snd_pcm
> snd_page_alloc          8964  2 snd_intel8x0,snd_pcm
> snd_mpu401_uart         6144  1 snd_intel8x0
> snd_rawmidi            20448  1 snd_mpu401_uart
> snd_seq_device          6536  3 snd_seq_oss,snd_seq,snd_rawmidi
>=20
> snd_intel8x0 is the driver module; the others are extra support modules=
=2E
> If these aren't loaded, the best way to load them is to run:
> # /etc/init.d/alsa start
> (you start and stop all services in debian like this. I make a symlink =

> from /init to /etc/init.d to save typing.)
>=20
> or you could try rebooting, or just do
> # modprobe snd_(driver-for-your-card)
> # modprobe snd_pcm_oss
> # modprobe snd_mixer_oss
> (the oss modules provide oss backwards compatibility)
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> Then use alsamixer to set the right levels (defaults to all muted and=20
> zeroed), and see if you can play something with aplay, mpg123, xmms or =

> whatever.
>=20
> if you want to change the setup of any debian package, you can type:
> dpkg-reconfigure <package name>.
>=20
> The tricky bit is finding which package you need to configure to do wha=
t=20
> - sometimes it's not obvious. (e.g. to set up X, it's dpkg-reconfigure =

> xserver-xfree86) The distro would be a hell of a lot easier for=20
> beginners to use if there was a decent front end to debconf and=20
> dpkg-reconfigure, with some kind of list of which were the key packages=
=20
> for each part of the system.
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> andy
>=20
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