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keywords: Red Hat 5.2, 6.0 kernel 2.0.36, 2.2.5 sb16 and others

Running sndconfig results in the error "could not open /dev/audio" and config fails. I've seen a number of unanswered questions in newsgroups about this. There are two possible fixes but the first one might be bogus.(Now it looks like it isn't - see below) 1) Configure your sound card before your modem. 2) I'm not sure whether the Custom Instal is flawed but if it isn't then you need to be very careful with what you put on. Doing a work station instal and then customising it worked for me. No probs with sndconfig at all. Here are some further notes from Eric Wagner... I read in the tips about problems with sndconfig. I run RH6.0 and was having similar problems. The issue with the modem was definitely the reason why mine crashed and burned. I run linux off a laptop, and when it starts up it configures cardmgr for pcmcia cards. The problem was that redhat defaults the ioports for my ethernet card (and possibly modems) in the spot where most soundcards default (usually 0x0220-0x022f range). I think that there is a bug in sndconfig that when it tries to probe for soundcards if these default ioports are taken, it just fails. The workaround involving configuring your modem or ethernet card after the soundcard is definitely a valid one. For me, I just removed the modules running the ethernet card (lsmod), ran sndconfig, and then inserted those modules again (insmod), and everything's worked fine since. definitely not bogus.

keywords: Red Hat 6, GNOME, Audio for non-root users

This is just to share my experience: I was able to run x11amp, get sound from window events, etc but only as user "root". I tried switching to kde, reconfiguring x11amp, etc..., nothing worked. Following advice found in comp.os.linux.setup, I added "killall esd" at the end of /usr/X11R6/bin/startx and BINGO! Apparently, this 'esd' (probably /usr/bin/esd) does not respond to signals properly, or is not being sent the appropriate signals when the prior X session ends.

Julio Cartaya

keywords: Timidity++, setup, help

Timidity++ is a software midi player and midi>wav converter that produces sounds superior to most harware setups. The only difficulty is that the current documementation (Sep 99) is very good as far as timidity is concerned but lacks details about where to get the sound patch set and how to set up the config files. If you go here you'll find the details and patches you need.

keywords: ALSA, driver-0.3.0-pre4, kernel 2.2.5, instal

Some tips...

If you're having OSS emulation, don't move the /lib/modules/ 2.2.5/misc drivers out of the way. Just copy them.

It can be hard to figure out what your /etc/conf/modules should look like. Here is one for a sb16...

  #ISA PnP support
  options isapnp isapnp_reserve_irq=9,10,11,12,13
  # ALSA portion
  alias char-major-116 snd
  options snd snd_major=116 snd_cards_limit=1
  alias snd-card-0 snd-sb16
  options snd-sb16 snd_index=1 snd_id="SB16"
  options snd_port=0x220 snd_irq=5 snd_dma8=1 snd_dma16=5 snd_mpu_port=330
  # OSS/Lite portion
  # OSS/Lite setup
  alias char-major-14 soundcore
  alias sound-slot-0 snd-card-0
  alias sound-service-0-3 snd-pcm1-oss
  alias sound-service-0-12 snd-pcm1-oss

keywords: Red Hat 5.2, Midi from linux-sound mailing list (Bill Nottingham)

playmidi as shipped in RH 5.2 is broken for FM synth; either upgrade to a later release, or do: cd /etc/midi for foo in *; do ln -s midi/$foo ../$foo ; done

keywords: Sound, Setup from Arturo o Run the setup program and let it detect your card. If it doesn't... o Take a look at the /usr/local/lib/oss/devices.cfg file. It will tell you all the information you have to put in the /etc/conf.modules file.

keywords: setup, AWE64, Wavetable

Here's not a solution to the situation where the card would not work at all, but to a common problem that the audio playing features work fine but the wavetable-driver refuses to find the card. The beginning of the next chapter doesn't sound like it would belong there, but that's just because I wrote it first and then this 'introduction', or something. Another possible problem with sbAWE64, that many people seem to have, is the fact that pnpdump fails to recognize correctly those IO-ports for the wavetable part of the card. I have never used Red Hat personally, so I don't know much about how configuring it goes, but when you get the card working so that sound can be heard, if you then notice that the wavetable driver doesn't find the card, and it is a PnP version, (is there a non-PnP-awe64?) the cause might be this. Usually isapnp's configuration file is /etc/isapnp.conf, and when created with pnpdump like it's usually done, there's lines like: --clip-- (CONFIGURE CTL00e4/297738542 (LD 2 ANSI string -->WaveTable<-- ..comments.. (IO 0 (BASE 0x0620)) --clap-- Now, AWE64 uses also ports 0xA20 and 0xE20 in addition to 0x620, and all implementations of pnpdump I've seen have been unable to detect that. So, one should replace the line (IO 0 (BASE 0x0620)) with something like --clip-- (IO 0 (BASE 0x0620)) (IO 1 (BASE 0x0A20)) (IO 2 (BASE 0x0E20)) --clap-- in /etc/isapnp.conf. (Heikki Kallasjoki) and more ... I have a RedHat system, and RedHat's "sndconfig" works just fine with my PNP AWE64 card. Even the wave tables work. The relevant part of "/etc/conf.modules" is: alias sound sb pre-install sound insmod sound dmabuf=1 options opl3 io=0x388 alias midi awe_wave post-install awe_wave /bin/sfxload /etc/midi/GU11-ROM.SF2 options sb io=0x220 irq=5 dma=1 dma16=5 mpu_io=0x330 The relevant parts of "/etc/isapnp.conf" are: (CONFIGURE CTL00c5/63091016 (LD 0 # ANSI string -->Audio<-- (INT 0 (IRQ 5 (MODE +E))) (DMA 0 (CHANNEL 1)) (DMA 1 (CHANNEL 5)) (IO 0 (SIZE 16) (BASE 0x0220)) (IO 1 (SIZE 2) (BASE 0x0330)) (IO 2 (SIZE 4) (BASE 0x0388)) (NAME "CTL00c5/63091016[0]{Audio }") (ACT Y) )) (CONFIGURE CTL00c5/63091016 (LD 2 # ANSI string -->WaveTable<-- (IO 0 (BASE 0x0620)) (IO 1 (BASE 0x0A20)) (IO 2 (BASE 0x0E20)) (NAME "CTL00c5/63091016[2]{WaveTable }") (ACT Y) )) (Dave Mielke on linux-sound)

Some General Places for Help:

The Support section at your Linux distribution's home page.

Search Dejanews

Newsgroups such as comp.os.linux.hardware

The Linux Audio-Quality-HOWTO

mailing lists which relate to different apps and are mentioned in the Readme or at the homepage.

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