[Leaplist] Alsa problems with Debian Etch

[Hank Lambert]

Thank you very much for the reply. I'll try these and see what happens.

Mark W. Alexander wrote:
> On Sun, Mar 30, 2008 at 12:53:25PM -0400, Hank Lambert wrote:
>   
>> I have installed Debian Etch on my Gateway 7330GZ laptop. I am tackling 
>> what I believe is my final hurdle, alsa is not working. ESD is working; 
>> I have system sounds and can play music through Amarok as long as esd is 
>> selected as the xine output plugin. As soon as I select alsa as the 
>> output plugin, I get a "xine was unable to initialize any audio drivers" 
>> error.
>>     
>
> Alsa is the set of sound drivers for physical sound cards. esd is a sound
> service daemon whose point is to enable multiple clients to access the sound
> hardware by abstracting the interface away from the physical devices. I'm not
> very familar with esd, but if it has exclusive control of the sound devices
> anything that tries to play sound without going the esd is going to fail.
>
>   
>> So the help that I need is either to get alsa working, or find out how 
>> to get Totem and VLC to use esd for sound. I have training videos that I 
>> use for work that are AVIs, and I need to be able to play them. I 
>> installed the latest alsa-driver, alsa-lib, and alsa-utils, ran 
>> alsaconf, and unmuted all selections in the volume control. I also added 
>> the external amplifier in the volume control and de-selected it. Still 
>> no alsa. I am not opposed to using esd exclusively as long as I can use 
>> them across the board.
>>     
>
> Try shutting down esd and _then_ try your non-esd aware applications.
>
>   
>> When I ran cat /proc/asound/cards, I got the following:
>>
>> Case:/home/hank# cat /proc/asound/cards
>>
>> 0 [I82801DBICH4   ]: ICH4 - Intel 82801DB-ICH4
>>                                     Intel 82801DB-ICH4 with unknown 
>> codec at 0xe02ff800, irq 169
>>     
>
> Which means you're using alsa.
>
>   
>> The unknown codec led me to believe that might be the problem, so I 
>> installed VLC. VLC runs the avi's at about 1 frame a second, not real 
>> conducive to watching videos. Regardless, it dtill didn't have any audio 
>> output. I looked in the various settings, but I found nothing to help me 
>> work with audio. Opening the avi in Amarok did produce audio, so I know 
>> their is audio with the avi. Here are some of my other tests:
>>     
>
> I doubt it. That's "I don't know what that codec on that chip is" not "I don't
> know how to play the codec in that file."
>
> [snip]
>   
>> If someone can point me in the right direction, I would really 
>> appreciate it. I have Googled this for days now, and can't seem to find 
>> my answer. I am working on April 5th, so I do not know if I will make 
>> the Installfest, where I am sure I could have gotten it fixed.
>>     
>
> Stop esd and try VLC and totem with alsa. If that works, find out how to
> configure them to use esd or switch to arts. Or maybe PulseAudio since that
> seems to be the future path.
>
>