[Sussex] Debian install - No sound

[Steve Dobson]

Hi John

On Fri, Sep 05, 2003 at 09:56:11PM +0100, John D. wrote:
> Does anyone know where or what I need to look at to try and get sound out of 
> my debian install?
> 
> So far, the only hint I've had is that when logged into root, I get a error 
> message that says "/dev/dsp no such file or directory".
> 
> I have done some digging around and tried a few "hit or miss" things, but 
> nothing has come of them, and I haven't got a clue what to try next.

First of all what sound hardware do you have?

Boot into Mandrake and then do a "lsmod".  On my system I see the following:
$ lsmod
Module                  Size  Used by    Not tainted
pcmf502r3              68672   1
3c59x                  24880   0
ide-cd                 26852   0 (autoclean)
cdrom                  28704   0 (autoclean) [ide-cd]
i810_audio             19720   1
ac97_codec              9928   0 [i810_audio]
soundcore               3300   2 [i810_audio]
ds                      6344   2 [pcmf502r3]
yenta_socket            8640   2
pcmcia_core            34144   0 [pcmf502r3 ds yenta_socket]
mousedev                3736   0 (unused)
hid                     8572   0 (unused)
usbmouse                1820   0 (unused)
iptable_filter          1668   0 (autoclean) (unused)
uhci                   23536   0 (unused)
usbcore                54080   1 [hid usbmouse uhci]
serial                 43172   0 (autoclean) (unused)
isa-pnp                27492   0 (autoclean) [serial]

Note that the core sound driver (soundcore) uses "i810_audio".  From reading
I also know that the i810 Intel chip uses a AC'97 Audio CODEC which is why
you also see "ac97_codec" loaded too.  

Boot back into Debian, and load the module by hand by typing:
   # modprobe <mod-name>
If you then do a "lsmod" you should see something simular to the Mandrake system.

If you add the module name to /etc/modules it to be automaticlly loaded 
on the next reboot.

Now see if /dev/dsp exists.
   $ ls -lL /dev/dsp
   crw-rw-rw-    1 root     audio     14,   3 Jan  1  1970 /dev/dsp

If you see this your up and running.  If not then you have two options.

1). Use /sbin/MAKEDEV to create the device special file, or

2). Use devfs to do everything for you.  

A google search will overload you with information for ether method.
If you take the MAKEDEV option then note that from my line above the
major number is 14 and the minor 3 - this may become clearer after
reading the help you find on the net.

Personally I would use (2).  It maybe a little be of pain setting it all up
but once working the devices just appear when the kerenl loads the module
(which is kinda cool).  When I first installed it it worked more or less
out of the box, but that doesn't mean it will for you (I build my own
kernels which makes this sort of think easier).

First apt-get install the package "devfsd".  I would then do a 
    # make /dev-state
and edit the devfs config file /etc/devfs/devfsd.conf and uncomment
the lines that save and restore permissions on the device files.

Then turn on devfs in the kernel.  Boot into Mandrake again and edit
/etc/lilo.conf and added the option "devfs=mound" to the append link for the
Debian kernel.  There is a good example here [1].

You will also find documentation about the packages in /usr/share/doc.
Have a look in the files for the "devfsd" and for "kernel-image-<version>".
The kernel image documentation may give clues as to how to turn on devfs.
(As I don't use the kernel-image packages I don't have that docuemntation
to browse, but the devfsd stuff does have lots of help (in GeekSpeek).

Have fun

Steve

[1]: http://videl.ics.hawaii.edu/pipermail/linuxpresario900/2003-January/000188.html

-- 
Debian Tip of the E-Mail:
Debian Hint #18: You can see all of the current bugs for a given package by
going to http://bugs.debian.org/<package>
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