[SLL] Fedora 8 - getting sound to work?

[Steve McCarthy]

Anyone else on the list using Fedora 8 who has figured out how to get sound
to work?

I am upgrading after several years of relative happiness with FC4, where the
sound worked reasonably well.  After the upgrade, the sound does not work at
all on the same hardware.

I have spent some time Googling, and have tried some of the more obvious
things like checking the permissions of the /dev/(mixer|audio|dsp) and
/dev/snd/*.  There have been some problems reported with the new pulseaudio,
and I have removed all packages that reference pulseaudio, to no avail.

Before I removed pulseaudio packages, I was seeing errors like (from memory)
"pulseaudio: connection refused".  After removing the pulse packages, I
don't see errors, but there is no sound either.

Usually I have a good idea where to look to debug problems like this, but I
am not sure where to look in the system for feedback. Suggestions
appreciated.  The whole pulse architecture, and where it fits in the alsa
/esd/asound universe is not at all clear.

Here are selected snippets from "ltrace aplay /usr/share/sounds/phone.wav".
Everything looks like it is working, just silence.
extdomain("alsa-utils")                         = "alsa-utils"
snd_pcm_info_sizeof(0x80519d4, 0x80516a2, 0, 0x804a470, 0) = 288
snd_pcm_info_sizeof(0x83fff4, 12, 0x813d7f, 0xbfd9d810, 0x70aa5d) = 288
memset(0xbfd9d7e0, '\000', 288)                  = 0xbfd9d7e0
snd_output_stdio_attach(0x805475c, 0x840560, 0, 0xbfd9d810, 0x70aa5d) = 0
strstr("aplay", "arecord")                       = NULL
strstr("aplay", "aplay")                         = "aplay"
getopt_long(2, 0xbfd9d9d4, "hnlLD:qt:c:f:r:d:s:MNF:A:R:T:B:v"..., 0x80544e0,
0xbfd9d920) = -1
snd_pcm_open(0x8054734, 0x80519ed, 0, 0, 0xbfd9d920) = 0
snd_pcm_info(0xa00b8d8, 0xbfd9d7e0, 0, 0, 0xbfd9d920) = 0
...
read(6, "", 3760)                                = 3760
snd_pcm_writei(0xa00b8d8, 0xa02d128, 940, 0x804afe7, 6 <unfinished ...>
snd_pcm_mmap_writei(0xa00b218, 0xa02d128, 940, 0xbfd9d6d8, 0x74ac7b) = 940
...
...<over and over>
...
read(6, "\366\377\366\377\376\377\356\377\005", 540) = 540
snd_pcm_format_set_silence(2, 0xa02d344, 1610, 0x804afe7, 6) = 0
snd_pcm_writei(0xa00b8d8, 0xa02d128, 940, 0x804afe7, 6 <unfinished ...>
snd_pcm_mmap_writei(0xa00b218, 0xa02d128, 940, 0xbfd9d6d8, 0x74ac7b) = 940
<... snd_pcm_writei resumed> )                   = 940
snd_pcm_drain(0xa00b8d8, 0, 455500, 0, 2)        = 0
close(6)                                         = 0
snd_pcm_close(0xa00b8d8, 0x804bb90, 0, 0, 0xbfd9d920) = 0
free(0xa02d128)                                  = <void>
snd_output_close(0x9ff8848, 0x804bb90, 0, 0, 0xbfd9d920) = 0
snd_config_update_free_global(0x9ff8848, 0x804bb90, 0, 0, 0xbfd9d920) = 0
+++ exited (status 0) +++


Here are the modules currently loaded:
~> lsmod |grep snd
snd_ens1371            23905  0
gameport               14665  1 snd_ens1371
snd_rawmidi            21185  1 snd_ens1371
snd_ac97_codec         92389  1 snd_ens1371
ac97_bus                6081  1 snd_ac97_codec
snd_seq_dummy           6725  0
snd_seq_oss            29889  0
snd_seq_midi_event      9793  1 snd_seq_oss
snd_seq                44849  5 snd_seq_dummy,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_midi_event
snd_seq_device         10061  4
snd_rawmidi,snd_seq_dummy,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq
snd_pcm_oss            37569  0
snd_mixer_oss          16705  1 snd_pcm_oss
snd_pcm                63685  3 snd_ens1371,snd_ac97_codec,snd_pcm_oss
snd_timer              20549  2 snd_seq,snd_pcm
snd                    43461  10
snd_ens1371,snd_rawmidi,snd_ac97_codec,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq,snd_seq_device,snd_pcm_oss,snd_mixer_oss,snd_pcm,snd_timer
soundcore               9633  1 snd
snd_page_alloc         11337  1 snd_pcm


-- 
Steve McCarthy
   sjm at mccrew.com
   mccrew at gmail.com