[SilverGator]

Hi folks, had such good luck here last time I'll try my next question here.

I need some help getting the sound working. It's integrated sound. I installed the nforce drivers, and I got them installed properly (I think). I had to load the kernel headers and rewrite parts of the make file to point towards those kernel headers, and I set the gcc version to use 2.95 like my kernel was built with.

By the way, this is on Debian, but I don't think the main problem is distro-specific.

I added the following to /etc/modutiles/aliases:
alias sound-slot-0 nvaudio
which is what the nvidia readme said to add, then I ran update-modules. I also added "nvaudio" to /etc/modules.

Anyway, my card is recognized (in some places), and the drivers are loaded, but my sound doesn't work. I haven't tried playing audio files, but gaim doesn't produce any sound, neither does any other system thing.

I'm using Gnome, and if I click on the audio thing (a speaker icon that has a strike-mark through it) on the top right, I get the message "Couldn't open mixer device /dev/sound/mixer." I looked in /dev, and there's no sound folder; mixer is in /dev. So I tried created the folder sound, and within it creating a symlink from /dev/sound/mixer to /dev/mixer, and I even chmoded /dev/mixer to 777, but still no good. If I hold my mouse over the speaker icon, a tooltip says "No audio device."

lsmod:
Module Size Used by Tainted: P
nvidia 1968320 14 (autoclean)
apm 9116 1 (autoclean)
nvnet 25952 0 (unused)
nvaudio 34968 0
ac97_codec 9568 0 [nvaudio]
soundcore 3204 2 [nvaudio]
natsemi 15720 1
keybdev 1664 0 (unused)
usbkbd 2848 0 (unused)
input 3040 0 [keybdev usbkbd]
usb-ohci 17472 0 (unused)
usbcore 48000 0 [usbkbd usb-ohci]

nvaudio and ac97_codec and soundcore are the drivers for the sound card.

lspci -v (sound card part only):
00:06.0 Multimedia audio controller: nVidia Corporation nForce2 AC97 Audio Controler (MCP) (rev a1)
Subsystem: Asustek Computer, Inc.: Unknown device 8095
Flags: bus master, 66Mhz, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 11
I/O ports at d400 [size=256]
I/O ports at d800 [size=128]
Memory at e4001000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4K]
Capabilities: [44] Power Management version 2


One note - if I run sndconfig, it detects the card properly, then gives me the following error when trying to play a test sound:
modprobe error
The following error occurred running the modprobe program:
/lib/modules/2.4.18-bf2.4/kernel/drivers/sound/i810_audio.o: init_module: No such device
/lib/modules/2.4.18-bf2.4/kernel/drivers/sound/i810_audio.o: insmod
/lib/modules/2.4.18-bf2.4/kernel/drivers/sound/i810_audio.o failed
/lib/modules/2.4.18-bf2.4/kernel/drivers/sound/i810_audio.o: insmod sound-slot-0 failed

Looks to me like it's trying to load a different driver (nforce installed the nvaudio driver). The i810_audio driver is present in the drivers directory (along with nvaudio).

So what am I missing? I'm not familiar with configuring sound, but I've checked everything I've been able to find from searching.

Thanks for the help.

[SilverGator]

Here's an update (if I have any more updates before a response from someone else is posted I'll just edit this post).

I found a file .xsession-errors in my home directory. I looked at it, and there was an error about /dev/dsp and permission denied. So I did chmod 666 /dev/dsp. Then I relogged in, and that was replaced by a message about playback rates. The icon on the top right still had a slash through it, and still said no sound device found, can't open /dev/sound/mixer. So I added a symbolic link from /dev/sound/mixer to the real /dev/mixer. Then I relogged in, and the .xsession-errors did not mention any playback rates, but still no sound, and it still said it can't load /dev/sound/mixer.

So I changed the permissions to 666 for /dev/mixer, then relogged in. Now gnome thinks I have sound (at least according to the icon on the top right, which now I can use to set volume). I unmuted it, but still no sound. And now I can open aumixer (couldn't before).

EDIT: Got it working. Turns out I had to tell every program to use ESD for sound, rather than what the program initially selected.