No sound on Ubuntu 11.04 + ALSA

**Mrokii** · 08-30-2011, 09:36 PM

Hi,

I was playing the game before with OSS installed (which I had to remove due to other apps not working with it). So I am using ALSA again, but now I don't hear sound anymore. I have four entries in the soundmenu, all being a variant of ALSA-options. Some of them give me errors like this:

AL lib: alsa.c:587: Could not open playback device 'hw:0,0': Device or resource busy

Others don't give any errors regarding ALSA, but I still don't hear any sound. Any thoughts or suggestions? Tia.

**Urkle** · 08-31-2011, 05:30 AM

Do you have pulse audio installed/running?

Could you post you hpl.log and launcher.log?

**Mrokii** · 10-10-2011, 06:11 PM

(08-31-2011, 05:30 AM)Urkle Wrote: Do you have pulse audio installed/running?

Could you post you hpl.log and launcher.log?

Hello,

sorry for the late reply, I completely forgot to check the forum again and apparently forgot to subscribe to the thread.
Anyhow, pulse audio is installed, as far as I can tell. But I can't find hpl.log and launcher.log. Where should these files be?

**Urkle** · 10-10-2011, 06:25 PM

They are located in ~/.frictionalgames/Amnesia/
(hidden folder in your home directory)

**Mrokii** · 10-10-2011, 06:44 PM

Hi and thanks,

I had a look at these files but they don't seem to reveal much. I could post them completely, but maybe it's enough if I post the sound-section.

hpl.log (the same is found in launcher.log):

Initializing Sound Module
--------------------------------------------------------
Initializing OpenAL
Available OpenAL devices:
0. ALSA Software on default(OpenAL default)
1. ALSA Software on HDA NVidia [ALC888 Analog] (hw:0,0)
2. ALSA Software on HDA NVidia [ALC888 Digital] (hw:0,1)
3. ALSA Software on Logitech G330 Headset [USB Audio] (hw:2,0)
Trying to open device 'ALSA Software on default'... Failed
Finding first device matching filter that works... Device name: ALSA Software on HDA NVidia [ALC888 Digital] (hw:0,1)
Success!
Number of mono sources: 32
Streaming setup: 4 Buffers x 262144 bytes each

I should mention that there are no other "failed" entries in these two files.

**Urkle** · 10-11-2011, 04:30 PM

Odds are something else has captured the audio device and not allowing the game to access it..

Do you have openal installed on your system?? (libopenal1). If not, install that and then re-run the "checklibs" script that is in the game directory. If you installed the game as root, you'll have to run the script as root too.

**Mrokii** · 10-12-2011, 11:05 AM

Hi Urkle,

no, I am pretty sure that nothing else has captured the audio-device. I know that problem from one or two other games and know how to circumvent it. libopenal1 is installed and checklibs doesn't produce any errors. I guess there must be still some obscure way how installing and deinstalling oss trashed my soundsystem, although all other apps/games (afaik) work fine. Thanks for the help anyway.

(10-11-2011, 04:30 PM)Urkle Wrote: Odds are something else has captured the audio device and not allowing the game to access it..

Do you have openal installed on your system?? (libopenal1). If not, install that and then re-run the "checklibs" script that is in the game directory. If you installed the game as root, you'll have to run the script as root too.

**Your Computer** · 10-12-2011, 11:15 AM

If you have pulse audio installed, you should be able to redirect the game to the audio card you want it to use in the pulse audio volume control.

**Mrokii** · 10-13-2011, 12:50 PM

Hi,

(10-12-2011, 11:15 AM)Your Computer Wrote: If you have pulse audio installed, you should be able to redirect the game to the audio card you want it to use in the pulse audio volume control.

Uhm, no, I can't. The PulseAudio-Window says that there are no cards available for configuration. I can choose Audio-Systems in the "Multimedia Systems Selector" (where I chose Alsa). I'm in doubt if I should chose something else there, as all other apps seem to work without problems.

**Urkle** · 10-13-2011, 02:14 PM

From your original error it does look like some application is already using the sound device, be that another application, pulseaudio, arts, etc.. And that is what is causing the game from getting access to the sound device.

If you have a multi-core/multi-CPU system I would suggest installing pulse audio as that will sit itself in alsa such that multiple devices can grab the sound device. Otherwise you need to figure out what application is using the primary alsa sound output and stop it from grabbing it.

You should be able to run this command

fuser /dev/snd/*

to determine what processes are accessing the ALSA subsystem.