arts, alsa making problems under knoppix

[Firestorm]

Hi, I installed Knoppix 3.8 and everything works so far but....

Sound server informational message:
Error while initializing the sound driver:
device /dev/dsp can't be opened (No such device)
The sound server will continue, using the null output device.

of course, there is /dev/dsp in the file tree

crw-rw-rw- 1 root audio 14, 3 2001-04-15 02:44 dsp

but

cat /var > /dev/dsp

returns:

bash: /dev/dsp: Kein passendes Gerät gefunden (="no matching hardware found")

I heard that in such cases alsa needs to be installed (although I still wonder why arts is installed without installing alsa)

to make it easier I took my old woody CDs and added the first two using

apt-cdrom add

and tried the following

apt-get install alsa-base alsa-utils


But this returned:

Die folgenden Pakete haben nichterfüllte Abhängigkeiten:
alsa-base: Hängt ab: modutils (>= 2.3.5-1) soll aber nicht installiert werden
E: Kaputte Pakete

"The following packages have non satisfied dependencies:
alsa-base depends in modutils (>= 2.3.5-1) which should not be installed
E: broken packages"

What does this mean and what can I do now?

thanks for any help!

[XiaoKJ]

what is your sound card, and what does lsmod show?

AFAIK, knoppix 3.8 uses 2.6 kernel, which in turn uses module-init-tools, not modutils.

that means apt is working correctly....

secondly, having /dev/dsp does not mean alsa is not installed. more often than not, alsa is already working properly in knoppix, as that is what i have in 3.8. having /dev/dsp with alsa just means the oss emulation is ok.

show us the related info and we'll see from there

[Firestorm]

lspci shows:

0000:00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corp. 440LX/EX - 82443LX/EX Host bridge (rev 03)
0000:00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corp. 440LX/EX - 82443LX/EX AGP bridge (rev 03)
0000:00:07.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corp. 82371AB/EB/MB PIIX4 ISA (rev 02)
0000:00:07.1 IDE interface: Intel Corp. 82371AB/EB/MB PIIX4 IDE (rev 01)
0000:00:07.2 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82371AB/EB/MB PIIX4 USB (rev 01)
0000:00:07.3 Bridge: Intel Corp. 82371AB/EB/MB PIIX4 ACPI (rev 02)
0000:00:08.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8139/8139C/8139C+ (rev 10)
0000:01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVidia / SGS Thomson (Joint Venture) Riva128 (rev 10)


and for some reason I cannot see my soundblaster here :eek:

hmm that is strange
the only answers I have now is:
1. my soundcard is broken or
2. the PCI slot is broken and I could try to put the card into another slot

what would you say??

[Firestorm]

First I tried to stick the sound card into another slot - did not change anything
Second I found an old sound card from an i486 machine and put it in a third slot - the lspci still responses the same (==> the second card was not found either)

What I maybe said wrong in the last post: my soundcards are not for PCI slots like the network card but they are stuck in a longer old-fashioned slot (if that matters to anyone)

What also may be of importance which I left out is what KDE-info centre says:

Sound
Sound Driver:3.8.1a-980706 (ALSA v1.0.8 emulation code)

...

Installed drivers:
Type 10: ALSA emulation

Card config:
--- no soundcards ---

...


this again shows that no card was found but also it says something about ALSA. Although "installed drivers" is left blank, there are the two other fields.....

maybe this gives you more information to give the right hint, thx again!

[Firestorm]

Sorry for pushing but I have really no idea what to do now.
If anyone has experienced similar problems please help.

[bwkaz]

/sbin/modprobe snd-pcm-oss

perhaps? Also make sure the module for your sound card is loaded (if you haven't already) -- what does lsmod say?

Your sound card likely uses the ISA bus instead of the PCI bus; that's why it's a longer slot. The contacts are probably wider, too, right? (Oooh -- that might mean it's an ISA-PnP card, which never really worked in either Windows or Linux... but if it is, and if you want to fight with it, you can try isapnptools. If it's ISA but not ISA-PnP, then it should have some jumpers on it, and you might need to know what the jumpers set the card to, IRQ-, I/O-, and DMA-wise.)

[Firestorm]

what does lsmod say?

Module Size Used by
md5 7680 1
ipv6 234784 6
snd_pcm_oss 47904 0
snd_pcm 77828 1 snd_pcm_oss
snd_timer 23684 1 snd_pcm
snd_page_alloc 11268 1 snd_pcm
snd_mixer_oss 18688 1 snd_pcm_oss
snd 46308 4 snd_pcm_oss,snd_pcm,snd_timer,snd_mixer_oss
soundcore 11104 1 snd
tsdev 9664 0
lp 13448 0
ntfs 163728 0
evdev 11008 0
via_agp 11264 0
sworks_agp 10912 0
sis_agp 9988 0
nvidia_agp 9756 0
intel_mch_agp 11792 0
intel_agp 22044 1
efficeon_agp 10144 0
ati_agp 10380 0
amd_k7_agp 9740 0
amd64_agp 13640 0
ali_agp 9216 0
autofs4 18820 1
af_packet 20104 0
agpgart 30512 11 via_agp,sworks_agp,sis_agp,nvidia_agp,intel_mch_ag p,intel_agp,efficeon_agp,ati_agp,amd_k7_agp,amd64_ agp,ali_agp
8139too 25600 0
mii 7808 1 8139too
i2c_piix4 11408 0
i2c_core 21248 1 i2c_piix4
parport_pc 38596 1
parport 33480 2 lp,parport_pc
8250 41308 0
serial_core 21120 1 8250
unionfs 816404 0
sbp2 24456 0
usb_storage 63296 0
ub 18332 0
ehci_hcd 31752 0
ohci1394 33028 0
ieee1394 300600 2 sbp2,ohci1394
usbhid 42176 0
ohci_hcd 21896 0
uhci_hcd 31376 0
usbcore 101496 7 usb_storage,ub,ehci_hcd,usbhid,ohci_hcd,uhci_hcd
pcmcia 21776 0
yenta_socket 21896 0
rsrc_nonstatic 12160 1 yenta_socket
pcmcia_core 42272 3 pcmcia,yenta_socket,rsrc_nonstatic
apm 22252 2
genrtc 12060 0
ext3 124552 1
jbd 65060 1 ext3

seems like the driver is loaded but not used

I guess it is one of those ISA-cards and yes there are some pins on it similar to those on a HDD but there are no jumpers and anyway I have no idea how to set them if I had any (there is no legend on the card itself and I doubt I have a manual somewhere)

so it seems the only solution is to ask a friend for an old PCI-slot card.........

[bwkaz]

Hmm...

If you can find one, I'd recommend the Yamaha YMF-724F chipset (may be labeled DS-XG or something similar). They're about $20 or so, they're PCI, and at least the one that I have (which came from Dell about 5 years ago, after I found out that the i815-chipset motherboard that they used didn't have a joystick port) allows multiple processes to write to /dev/dsp at once. About the only thing it won't do is surround-sound -- it's 2-channel only.

It uses the snd-ymfpci module. (Or ymfpci, if you want to use OSS, but there's really no reason to do that anymore.) It also works with hotplug, and shows up in lspci (since it is, after all, PCI ;)).