Audio problem in FreeBSD 6.2

[saivinob]

Hi,
I'm not able to enable sound on my FreeBSD 6.2. The error message when I click on the speaker icon is:

The volume control did not find any elements and/or devices to control. This means either that you don'thave the right GStreamer plugins installed, or that you don't have a sound card configured.

My motherboard is Asus K8V-VM with southbridge VT8233A. I tried,

kldload snd_via8233

When it didnot work I tried,

kldload snd_driver

cat /dev/sndstat yields just,

#cat /dev/sndstat
FreeBSD Audio Driver (newpcm)
Installed devices:

The motherboard uses Realtek ALC660 codec I believe...

Any idea how I can solve this problem? I have no problem with audio in any of the linuces on my box.

[anomie]

I may be missing something, but I can't seem to find any amount of useful information on the ALC660 (even on realtek's support site). Is there any more info you can provide about the device/chipset?

I've never run into a situation where the snd_driver metadriver was not able to provide a usable driver. It is possible your device is not supported.

[anomie]

My motherboard is Asus K8V-VM with southbridge VT8233A. I tried,

kldload snd_via8233

When it didnot work I tried

Whoops, somehow I missed that entire blurb. (I noticed it when I read your same post elsewhere.)

From the manpage for snd_via8233(4), it does look like the VIA VT8233A is supported. When you kldload that driver, does anything appear in /dev/sndstat? Also confirm with kldstat that it loaded the module properly.

[saivinob]

Whoops, somehow I missed that entire blurb. (I noticed it when I read your same post elsewhere.)

I know you frequent other forums.
I have posted the same problem in linuxquestions.org and bsdforums.org. But no reply in either forums. My past exp. says this forum is more friendlier and chances of one getting replies(irrespective of whether problem is solved or not!) is more here.

When you kldload that driver, does anything appear in /dev/sndstat? Also confirm with kldstat that it loaded the module properly.

Nothing appears when I try cat /dev/sndstat
When I tried kldstat first time I got,

Id Refs Address    Size     Name
 1   10 0xc0400000 6f6544   kernel
 2    1 0xc0af7000 59f20    acpi.ko
 3    1 0xc4364000 16000    linux.ko
 4    1 0xc43b9000 17000    ng_btsocket.ko
 5    1 0xc43d0000 a000     netgraph.ko
 6    1 0xc43de000 2000     ng_bluetooth.ko

Then I did

kldload sound
kldload snd_via8233

Afterwhich the kldstat gave me this,

Id Refs Address    Size     Name
 1   12 0xc0400000 6f6544   kernel
 2    1 0xc0af7000 59f20    acpi.ko
 3    1 0xc4365000 16000    linux.ko
 4    1 0xc43b9000 17000    ng_btsocket.ko
 5    1 0xc43d0000 a000     netgraph.ko
 6    1 0xc43de000 2000     ng_bluetooth.ko
 7    2 0xc4d6d000 1c000    sound.ko
 8    1 0xc4d92000 5000     snd_via8233.ko

But strangely after I rebooted the output of kldstat reverted back to first one i.e. no entry for sound and snd_via8233.

Then I tried editing the /boot/loader.conf (it was empty! is that correct or something wrong?). I added the line,

snd_via8233_load="YES"

Now the kldstat showed,

Id Refs Address    Size     Name
 1   12 0xc0400000 6f6544   kernel
 2    1 0xc0af7000 6170     snd_via8233.ko
 3    2 0xc0afe000 22b88    sound.ko
 4    1 0xc0b21000 59f20    acpi.ko
 5    1 0xc4368000 16000    linux.ko
 6    1 0xc43c6000 17000    ng_btsocket.ko
 7    1 0xc43bb000 a000     netgraph.ko
 8    1 0xc43e1000 2000     ng_bluetooth.ko

Now, this entry is consistant but this has not solved my problem.

As for ALC660 even I didnot find any support in realtek' s ownsite. Actually, in one of mailinglists one user had the same problem with ALC660. But all he got as response was to forget about onboard sound and to install an external card! Even googling didnot help.

Looking at the msg which also mentioned about GStream plugins, I ran /usr/sysinstall and through ftp option installed whatever 'gstreamer*' thing I could find and rebooted.

Nothing worked. The snag persists. Dont know what to do ?!

Well, I'm not a music guy so soundwise it doesnot really matter. But it's kinda puzzle which I'm not able to solve and it hurts the ego.

[anomie]

Just so we're on the same page: After loading the snd_via8233 module, is there anything in /dev/sndstat or not? If so, there may be some other issues we can look at. If not, I'm not sure what else to try (apart from the mailing lists).

[saivinob]

Well, nothing! 'cat /dev/sndstat' gives me just this,

#cat /dev/sndstat
FreeBSD Audio Driver (newpcm)
Installed devices:

Whereas, 'kldstat' is consistent in the sense now it shows entries for sound and snd_via8233.
I didnot have luck with mailing lists archives. I googled a lot.
I've not used mailing lists before so dont know how to use it. Will IRC help?
Will try everything. Lets see.

[anomie]

If you'd like to use the mailing lists, read this section of the handbook:
C.1 Mailing Lists

Post back if you get the issue resolved (or determine that it can't be resolved).

[saivinob]

If you'd like to use the mailing lists, read this section of the handbook:
C.1 Mailing Lists

Sure anomie, the whole evening I was studying about mailing lists. Finally I posted in 'freebsd-questions', the mailing list for the newbies. Hopefully, they will redirect me if that is not a proper maillist.

But I foundout that the yahoo's mail formatting is horrible for the very same reasons Greg Lehey had written a full article. From his articles I've now landed at 'Mutt' page, the best loved mailer on Unix.

Its kinda chain reaction. Link by link I'm being led to fascinating world of technology.

Post back if you get the issue resolved (or determine that it can't be resolved).

Ofcourse yes!

[saivinob]

Hi,
I'm back...but this time with some good news. The problem is solved.

It was a silly but major mistake on my part to inform you guys that the chipset was VT8233A. Actually it was VT8237A. I was also, told that VT8237 and VT8237A are NOT the same. Thats why snd_via8233 was not able to load the driver(though it supported VT8237).

The actual module was snd_hda. I got the precompiled module from Index of /~ariff/lowlatency/

I copied the sound.ko and snd_hda.ko to /boot/kernel and then edited /boot/loader.conf so as to load 'snd_hda' at boot time.

Now 'sndstat' shows,

FreeBSD Audio Driver (newpcm: 64bit 2007100200/i386)
Installed devices:
pcm0: <VIA VT8251/8237A High Definition Audio Controller> at memory 0xfbefc000 irq 17 kld snd_hda [20070930_0048] [MPSAFE] (1p:1v/1r:1v channels duplex default)

Audio is working fine.

Thanks a lot to anomie and to all who tried to solve my problem. Hope this thread will be of help to someone.

Lessons learnt:
* Be very careful. Every character may(will) be important esp. with file/driver/command names.
* Read the manual again and again and again.
* Try mailing lists, IRCs and other channels too. They not only may help in solving problems but also will introduce us to different technologies.

[anomie]

Good work. Thanks for sharing the fix.