[SOLVED] No sound. Realtek AC97 Sound card

[blue_wolf]

Hi all,

I have just installed gentoo and gnome to find that i have no sound. Im guessing it is because i havent cofigured my sound card. How do i do this? It is an internal sound card which i believe is intergrated into my laptops motherboard. Thanks

[budman7]

Try "emerge alsa"
After that is done do "alsamixer"
That should get your sound working.
Provided you installed the correct sound module into your kernel.

[blue_wolf]

Thanks a lot for the reply

First of all i installed genkernel so i guess the module is somewhere on my system and i need to modprobe it. Where are the sound car modules stored? I know ethernet is /lib/modules/<version>/kernel/drivers/net but cant find the sound ones. My sound card is Realtek AC97, i dont suppose you'd know which module to probe? Also i tried running alsaconf and alsamixer, alsaconf failed to detect a sound card and alsamixer gave an error saying:

# alsamixer
alsamixer: function snd_ctl_open failed for default: No such file or directory

Thanks again

edit:

Here is some more information to help locate the problem.

As i said when i run alsamixer i get an error saying function snd_ctl_open failed for default: No such file or directory.

The mixer icon on the gnome panel has a red slash going through it, when i leave the mouse over the icon it says "No audio device". When i double click the icon it says "Couldn't open mixer device /dev/sound/mixer". When i type lspci this is the output i get

# lspci
0000:00:00.0 Host bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SiS645DX Host & Memor y & AGP Controller (rev 01)
0000:00:01.0 PCI bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] Virtual PCI-to-PCI bri dge (AGP)
0000:00:02.0 ISA bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SiS962 [MuTIOL Media I O] (rev 14)
0000:00:02.1 SMBus: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SiS961/2 SMBus Controller
0000:00:02.3 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] FireWire Con troller
0000:00:02.5 IDE interface: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 5513 [IDE]
0000:00:02.6 Modem: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] AC'97 Modem Controller (rev  a0)
0000:00:02.7 Multimedia audio controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] Sound  Controller (rev a0)
0000:00:03.0 USB Controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] USB 1.0 Controller  (rev 0f)
0000:00:03.1 USB Controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] USB 1.0 Controller  (rev 0f)
0000:00:03.2 USB Controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] USB 1.0 Controller  (rev 0f)
0000:00:03.3 USB Controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] USB 2.0 Controller
0000:00:04.0 Ethernet controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SiS900 PCI Fa st Ethernet (rev 90)
0000:00:09.0 CardBus bridge: ENE Technology Inc CB1410 Cardbus Controller
0000:01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV17 [GeForce4 420 Go  32M] (rev a3)

[membrake]

The RealTek AC97 sound card is compatible with intel's 8x0. The module is called snd_intel8x0, and should be in /lib/modules/<version>/kernel/sound/pci/snd-intel8x0.ko

If you don't have it, you should try:

emerge alsa-lib

which compiles tons of modules, and see if that works. I haven't used genkernel but I suppose you will need the same version of linux's headers in /usr/src for the emerge to build the modules correctly, too.
The emerge might fail, saying you already have alsa in the kernel, in which case I wouldn't know what to do other than recompile the kernel, but that should only happen if the alsa libs are built into the kernel (ie not as modules), afaik.
Hope that helps.

[blue_wolf]

Thanks for the reply

You are correct, it is the snd_intel8x0 module i need to install, except i dont have that module on the system. I also dont have a sound directoy in the /lib/modules/<version>/kernel directroy either. I downloaded alsa-libs but it unfortunately made no difference

How do i get the snd_intel8x0 module? Something tells me that im going to have to recompile the kernel lol.

Thanks for your help mate

[jaboua]

You can get alsaconf to configure the sound for you if you emerge the "alsa-utils" package, but for alsaconf to work you must first make alsa and the required driver install as modules (genkernel may have built it into the kernel, I am not sure since I never used genkernel). Anyways, I beleve you can recompile a genkernel-produced kernel, do that and add alsa and the needed driver as modules, recompile and reinstall and then alsaconf should work.

[junkman4547]

Genkernel users already have ALSA subsystem active in the kernel. According to ALSA guide, youŽll need to emerge alsa-utility though....code

# emerge alsa-utils

It continues to configuring your sound card with

# alsaconf

....hope this help you.

[blue_wolf]

After days of none stop trying and breaking ive managed to get sound working. I've looked at all possible problems so im quite good with getting sound working now, so if anyone else is suffering from the same problem then feel free to PM me and i'll see what i can do to help.

Thanks to everyone that helped me

[nautilu]

well, how about this one:
when i login as root to GNOME i have sound anf everything is fine
but when i login as normal user: nothing, no sound device at all

[budman7]

Add your user to the audio group. I think the command is

usermod -G audio username

if that doesn't work, try

man usermod