Sound Card Problem (branching of from Connecting to camera)

[deskflier]

OK. After thinking about the difficulties in trying to make my Canon PowerShot A70 work, I have decided to return it and buy a camera that is on the gtkam list of cameras that I can supposedly connect to.

Among the other problems that I have in running the Red Hat 9.0 distribution, is that I cannot get the CD-ROM drive to play music. When I ran SuSE 8.1, I could not get the kscd to play a CD. Now I can put a CD in and gnome-cd automatically starts and plays the CD. However.... no sound comes out of the speakers. The speakers and sound card supposedly do work because, during setup, Red Hat played a test sound that came through just fine. I have opened the volume control and everything was up (and I even moved the CD and overall volumes to louder). It seems I cannot win for losing with Linux right now.

Any thoughts on what it takes to get some music. nsh

Dan

nsh = need some help :-)

[pbharris]

hi dan,
yes - people besides me do respond to these posts

okay - please bear with me, i must ask:
1. is the volume for the cdplayer turned up? - you have a few option with the sound mixer for linux
here is a snapshot:


2. is the cable from the sound card to the cd rom connected?

i know they are dumb questions - but 95 % of the issues fall into on of these camps.

hth
paul

[deskflier]

Paul,

Thanks for the help. I did check my volume control again. 'vol', 'speaker', and 'cd' were up (and I moved them to the top). I started a CD in gnome-cd again and still no sound.

The cable between the CD-ROM and the sound card would have to be connected because just a couple weeks ago when I was running SuSE 8.1, I was able to play CD's and hear the music.

Dan

Do you get any errors while trying to play sounds, such as "device already in use by whatever" or anything? Also, I had a problem on a laptop once, that two sound modules were loaded by the kernel and were fighting for control. Do an lsmod as root and see if you see anything odd. Also, just to be thorough, make sure the speakers are in the right port. Not saying your stupid or anything, its just easier to check the quick stuff first.

[pwrhouse]

I would also check to see if you have the correct permissions for:
/dev/dsp
and
/dev/mixer

Also maybe check if you can play a CD as root. If you can it is usually a permission problem.

[pbharris]

hi dan,
can you try a different program to play a CD - cdplay... a long liong time ago i could not get my cd player to work under linux too - i switched to another CD player and it worked.

[deskflier]

To pbharris and pwrhouse,

OK -- this is what I tried. Under my log in, I tried playing the CD on Grip. Then I log in on a KDE session and tried playing using kscd and Grip. Then I logged in as root and tried playing using Grip and the regular Gnome CD player. No success at all.

Thoughts?

Don't know how to check permissions for
/dev/dsp
and
/dev/mixer

Could you explain that in easy terms, preferably with short words. :-)

Dan

[quote author=pwrhouse link=board=1;threadid=6956;start=0#64720 date=1052228829]
I would also check to see if you have the correct permissions for:
/dev/dsp
and
/dev/mixer

Also maybe check if you can play a CD as root. If you can it is usually a permission problem.
[/quote]

[pbharris]

hello,
to check permissions type ls -l /dev/dsp in a terminal - it should look like this:

- crw------- 1 pbharris root 14, 3 Jan 30 04:24 /dev/dsp

[deskflier]

Well, unfortunately I have had to abandon Linux. I have switched to Windows XP. While I would like to stay with Linux for it's stability, cost-efficiency and clean-running programs and avoid the expense of Microsoft products, I simply cannot.

I need my computer to work for me, not me for the computer. I don't have the technical skills to compile, fix dependencies, check and change permissions, diagnose hardware problems with virtually everything that I do.

I would love to see Linux take off (as I am sure that many of you do as well). But it is not a user friendly environment. SuSE and Red Hat have made strides in this area in the last two years since I switched to Linux, but I just don't have the time to learn the technical intricacies that Linux seems to still demand at this time.

My wife and daughter like to use the computer to do many other things which were not possible under Linux.

I wish all the best and hope that I can some time return to using Linux as my only operatings system.

Regards,
Dan

[quote author=pbharris link=board=1;threadid=6956;start=0#64837 date=1052368975]
hello,
to check permissions type ls -l /dev/dsp in a terminal - it should look like this:

- crw------- 1 pbharris root 14, 3 Jan 30 04:24 /dev/dsp
[/quote]

[pbharris]

give it another shot in two more years or so.