Suddenly, no sound from EeePC

[mongoose]

Pupeee has been running very nicely on my EeePC for a couple of weeks now. In fact, I'm typing on it right now.

Today it has developed a fault however. All of a sudden the sound no longer works. It has been working flawlessly up to now, and suddenly today I get no sounds, and no volume icon in the task bar.

I did some fiddling yesterday to enable DMA on the SSD, which worked, but I think I must have broken something in the process. I've now put the system back to running on the old DMAless drivers but still no sound.

I've ruled out the possibility that the hardware has spontaniously combusted by booting from a USB key into the version of Pupeee I used to evaluate the system before installing it to the SSD. Under that version of Pupeee the sound works just fine.

I'm pretty sure it must be something stupid that I have done, but I'm at a loss to figure out what. Any suggestions?

[mongoose]

I did some snooping around in log files and found this in /tmp/bootsysinit.log

Starting sound driver: snd-hda-intel
done
/usr/sbin/alsactl: set_control:970: failed to obtain info for control #1 (Invalid argument)
/usr/sbin/alsactl: set_control:970: failed to obtain info for control #4 (No such file or directory)
/usr/sbin/alsactl: set_control:970: failed to obtain info for control #5 (No such file or directory)
/usr/sbin/alsactl: set_control:970: failed to obtain info for control #6 (No such file or directory)
/usr/sbin/alsactl: set_control:970: failed to obtain info for control #7 (No such file or directory)
/usr/sbin/alsactl: set_control:970: failed to obtain info for control #12 (No such file or directory)
/usr/sbin/alsactl: set_control:970: failed to obtain info for control #13 (No such file or directory)
/usr/sbin/alsactl: set_control:970: failed to obtain info for control #17 (No such file or directory)
/usr/sbin/alsactl: set_control:970: failed to obtain info for control #18 (No such file or directory)
/usr/sbin/alsactl: set_control:970: failed to obtain info for control #19 (No such file or directory)
/usr/sbin/alsactl: set_control:970: failed to obtain info for control #20 (No such file or directory)
/usr/sbin/alsactl: set_control:970: failed to obtain info for control #21 (No such file or directory)
/usr/sbin/alsactl: set_control:970: failed to obtain info for control #22 (No such file or directory)
XXX write TLV...
amixer: Mixer default load error: Invalid argument
amixer: Mixer default load error: Invalid argument
Device 0 is not supported by this system

does that suggest a cause to anyone? I'm going to try booting into the puppy which works properly and looking in this file.

[mongoose]

I just checked and under the working puppy, all I get is

Starting sound driver: snd-hda-intel
done

amixer: Unable to find simple control 'Master',0

amixer: Unable to find simple control 'PCM',0


which seems much friendlier.

So it looks like the problem is alsa related, but now I'm rather stuck to know how to fix it.

[Pizzasgood]

Try running the alsa wizard again, in case your configuration got messed up. Otherwise I have no idea.

[mongoose]

thanks pizzas, unfortunately that didn't work

[John Lewis]

Hi mongoose,
I had a similar problem. It was caused by a sound lib file that had become corrupted. Re installing the file cured the problem.

From memory it was libasound.so.2.0.0 or similar.
The error showed up when I ran alsamixer in the terminal.

It might be worth a look.

Hope this helps.

John Lewis

[mongoose]

thanks John, do you remember where that file might be? I have had a bit of a look around but I can't see it. TBH I've been using linux for a while but am still a bit of a n00b when it comes to fixing it.

The other install of puppy on my memory stick has now done exactly the same thing, and this time I did absolutely nothing to cause it. One day it was working fine, the next day no sound.

Pupeee is so close to being exactly what I want for this little machine, but if its going to loose its sound every couple of weeks I'm going to have to switch back to eeeXubuntu and put up with having a full SSD :(:(:(

[Jaybekay]

I had the exactly the same thing happen with Pupeee on my eee pc!

I thought it was my fault and figured it was a sign from the Linux gods to play with SLAX for a little while! Now that I have that out of my system, I am about to reinstall Pupeee

Hope you figure it out! I'll post if (when) it happens to me again

[John Lewis]

Hello Mongoose,

Sorry to be slow in answering. My wife fell from bike and broke her leg and I have been busy due to that until today.

Those lib files are to be found in /usr/lib there are a number of them to do with sound.

As I mentioned the problem was reported when I tried to run alsamixer in the terminal. Perhaps try running the program you want sound from in the terminal and see if it reports an error.

I've also lost other things like wireless and found similar problems and cure.
I suspected my card, took it back.The shop claims to have tested it and ok. I'm
wondering if the heat generated by the eeepc is causing card faults.

John Lewis

[dale5351]

I am trying Puppy 3.01 on EeePC also. I have no sound. I have no volume control on the task bar at the bottom. I've tried running a variety of programs in the multimedia section of the menu items, but none of them have done anything meaningful.

The one I would have expected to do some "Puppy Volume Mixer" is completely void. If I click on file, I get an option to "select controls", then all of them are greyed out.

I have searched all over this forum, and not come up with anything that seems useful.

I did try running alsamixer in command window and got an error message: Function snd_ctl_open failed for default: No such device.

Any thoughts please?

[drs]

This same problem has happened on my EEE Pc 2 or 3 times. It never has happened on my other PC's with Puppy.

I keep copies of my pup_save file and go back to the most recent one. Not the best solution,but I don't know what else to do. A void Puppy sound mixer window is the telltail sign that this hashappend.

[dale5351]

A void Puppy sound mixer window is the telltail sign that this hashappend.

I think that it has something to do with running the ALSA sound wizard. It recognizes a sound card

Code: Select all

hda-intel 00:1b.0 Class 0403: 8086:2668 (rev 04)

When I tell it to configure card, it modifies /etc/modprobe.conf and adds two lines at the bottom. It talks about setting up /etc/rc.d/rc.alsa to start ALSA.

If I go to /etc/rc.d and execute ./rc.alsa restart I get multiple error messages. These are lines such as:

Code: Select all

/usr/sbin/alsactl: set_control:970: failed to obtain info for control #X (<message>)

where separate lines are given for #1,4,5,6,7,12,13,17,18,19,20,21, and 22. The <message> is "invalid argument" for #1 and "no such file or directory" for all the rest.

There are also two error messages which say

Code: Select all

amixer: Mixer default load error: Invalid argument

(same line twice)

I don't know what to do about any of this information -- but maybe it will point someone with more knowledge about the underpinnings of ALSA into how to repair the setup of it.

[dale5351]

Problem solved for me. Thanks to an old post that I finally stumbled across, sound for EeePC, I now have sound and a volume adjustment icon on the traybar at the bottom.