Sound/Alsa Problems in Hoary?

[ToddMaynard]

Is anybody else having trouble with sound in Hoary? When alsa start it shows: alsactl: load_state:1134: No soundcards found...

I haven't figured out how to configure alsa. No alsa-config in Ubuntu as I understand it.

I have opened a bug report on it :
https://bugzilla.ubuntu.com/show_bug.cgi?id=3080

I am interested in ideas for troubleshooting and if others are experiencing this problem.

Thanks,

Todd Maynard

[herweg]

I too am having sound trouble, on both of my machines that run Ubuntu, I get no sound, and the only error messages I get are from MPlayer, which tells me "audio_setup: Can't open audio device /dev/dsp: Device or resource busy". So far, everything I have found has not worked, so I guess if I don't see any solutions I'll just have to reinstall on both machines, since before I upgraded to Hoary, sound was perfectly fine.

[oddabe19]

It would maybe help if we knew your sound cards...

I have an Audigy and everything works great.

[lockenkeyster]

I have integrated sound (intel AC'97 -- not sure what the card actually is though) on a Dell 500m. Everything was fine until upgrade to hoary, and now no sound. Same error that others have seen about "no device" from mplayer; xmms gives no error.

[flygmaskin]

I have some sort of integrated nforce2 sound (MSI k7N2G-L Mobo). And I cant play any sound at all (well, only tested in beep-media-player and MPlayer so far).

When I try to play mp3s in beep-media-player, the player seems to do nothing. No error messages or anything.

In MPlayer, as soon as I open a movie with sound, I get the following error message:
[QUOUTE]audio_setup: Can't open audio device /dev/dsp: Device or resource busy[/QOUTE]

Both of these programs are using the OSS output. All of this worked fine before I upgrade to Hoary.

EDIT: Just tested rhythmbox as well, I got an error message about /dev/dsp being busy.

EDIT AGAIN: ESD seems to be the problem. I fixed this problem by running "killall esd"

[ToddMaynard]

For hardware I have : 0000:00:11.5 Multimedia audio controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8233/A/8235/8237 AC97 Audio Controller (rev 50)

I think that esd is working fine. It is just alsa can now longer find the sound card. Is there anyway to have alsa re-detect the soundcard?

[lockenkeyster]

I have some sort of integrated nforce2 sound (MSI k7N2G-L Mobo). And I cant play any sound at all (well, only tested in beep-media-player and MPlayer so far).

When I try to play mp3s in beep-media-player, the player seems to do nothing. No error messages or anything.

In MPlayer, as soon as I open a movie with sound, I get the following error message:
[QUOUTE]audio_setup: Can't open audio device /dev/dsp: Device or resource busy[/QOUTE]

Both of these programs are using the OSS output. All of this worked fine before I upgrade to Hoary.

EDIT: Just tested rhythmbox as well, I got an error message about /dev/dsp being busy.

EDIT AGAIN: ESD seems to be the problem. I fixed this problem by running "killall esd"


Thanks fly! i did killall esd and sound works great now... anyway to do this permanently?

[herweg]

It would maybe help if we knew your sound cards...

Sorry about that - my one machine has the same sound as lockenkeyster, it's an Inspiron 8200. Not sure on the other machine but I know it's integrated.

After trying killall esd, the error went away, but I still can't seem to get any sound.

[lockenkeyster]

Sorry about that - my one machine has the same sound as lockenkeyster, it's an Inspiron 8200. Not sure on the other machine but I know it's integrated.

After trying killall esd, the error went away, but I still can't seem to get any sound.


have you tried switching your audio device to oss? this got mplayer sound working for me... xmms just started working on its own...

[herweg]

Okay, well, this sound thing is pretty weird. I played with some mixer settings (i.e. I unmuted anything that was muted and put all volumes up to about half) after killing esd. After a reboot, I have system sounds, but MPlayer tells me that /dev/dsp is busy. If I kill esd, I lose system sounds, but MPlayer works.

[ToddMaynard]

The sound problem I had is resolved. It turns out that discover upgrade re-enabled it's init script. Discover was loading the OSS drivers which prevented hotplug from loading the ALSA drivers. (as hotplug was loading afterwards.)

See bugzilla for details. Thanks to Matt for quick response on this.

A couple of ideas for those still troubleshooting:

lsof /dev/dsp

should show what is using /dev/dsp

todd@toddlaptop:~ $ lsof /dev/dsp
COMMAND PID USER FD TYPE DEVICE SIZE NODE NAME
esd 5345 todd 5w CHR 14,3 6133 /dev/dsp


You should have a card0 listed under /proc/asound

todd@toddlaptop:/proc/asound $ ls
card0 cards devices modules oss pcm seq timers V8235 version

[lockenkeyster]

Okay, well, this sound thing is pretty weird. I played with some mixer settings (i.e. I unmuted anything that was muted and put all volumes up to about half) after killing esd. After a reboot, I have system sounds, but MPlayer tells me that /dev/dsp is busy. If I kill esd, I lose system sounds, but MPlayer works.


yeah, I guess it was the same for me, just didn't realize it b/c I had system sounds turned off (but not disabled?)

I disabled them completely and now I don't have to do the killall... does anyone know if the bug referred to earlier in the thread has anything to do with this same problem?

[ToddMaynard]

lockenkeyster,

I'm not sure if we were suffering from the same problems or not, as we were having different symptoms. You can try upgrading to the new discover package. I think that all it will do is removed the discover init script so that it doesn't launch at startup and see if this fixes your problem.

Do you know if you are using alsa or OSS drivers?

--Todd

[lockenkeyster]

lockenkeyster,

I'm not sure if we were suffering from the same problems or not, as we were having different symptoms. You can try upgrading to the new discover package. I think that all it will do is removed the discover init script so that it doesn't launch at startup and see if this fixes your problem.

Do you know if you are using alsa or OSS drivers?

--Todd


I'll try upgrading to the new discover (shouldn't hurt other work...?) but I am using OSS drivers.

With Warty, my ALSA drivers weren't working at all, so I switched to OSS then. When I upgraded to Hoary I was having some issues with mplayer (unrelated) so I went through the multimedia HOWTO. Now, ALSA drivers don't even show up as an option for me!

[kensai]

lockenkeyster,

I'm not sure if we were suffering from the same problems or not, as we were having different symptoms. You can try upgrading to the new discover package. I think that all it will do is removed the discover init script so that it doesn't launch at startup and see if this fixes your problem.

Do you know if you are using alsa or OSS drivers?

--Todd
Ok I see in your bug report this is being fixed I only have a question for you. I am using alsa drivers just like warty normally do and when I upgraded to hoary before this bug was fixed I lost sound in Games XMMS and mplayer, everything except for system sound (Ubuntu sound theme in Gnome). SO I reinstalled warty again, but now that this is fixed can I safely upgrade to hoary again and not loose sound?

[herweg]

Sorry to dig this up, but I was wondering if there were any solutions? I have recently re-upgraded to hoary from a fresh install of Warty final, and while Hoary is much better than last time I upgraded, sound continues to be an issue. It appears that I use OSS drivers, and it also appears that esound, for whatever reason, continues to be used by SOMETHING, I'm speculating something to do with system sounds. This is because I have system sound, and relatively little else when I leave esd running, then when I kill esd, I lose my system sounds, but MPlayer works, games work, and flash movies get their sound back. I saw that someone suggested maybe trying alsa drivers - how do I go about switching? (Sorry if that's a really n00bish question...)
Any ideas? Is anyone still having this problem? Or am I the only one left?

[lockenkeyster]

Sorry to dig this up, but I was wondering if there were any solutions? I have recently re-upgraded to hoary from a fresh install of Warty final, and while Hoary is much better than last time I upgraded, sound continues to be an issue. It appears that I use OSS drivers, and it also appears that esound, for whatever reason, continues to be used by SOMETHING, I'm speculating something to do with system sounds. This is because I have system sound, and relatively little else when I leave esd running, then when I kill esd, I lose my system sounds, but MPlayer works, games work, and flash movies get their sound back. I saw that someone suggested maybe trying alsa drivers - how do I go about switching? (Sorry if that's a really n00bish question...)
Any ideas? Is anyone still having this problem? Or am I the only one left?

I am still just running with no system sounds b/c I never figured out how to switch to alsa either... It's not too big of a deal for me, but it would be cool to have it "just work" like most everything seems to so far = )

[mdognrdog]

Short-term, the thing to do is to disable the Ubuntu sound theme (which uses ESD), so that ALSA can grab your card. Long-term, the Ubuntu developers need to fix things so that they work like they did under Warty, where I had no trouble getting ESD and ALSA to play nice.