Ancient Thinkpad running Mint 9 cannot get sound to endure re-boot

hexeta · 12-07-2010, 10:04 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by snowpine

See my post #20. You need alsa-utils installed ("sudo apt-get install alsa-utils") if you want to use alsamixer and alsaconf.

Wow! that's the first positive response I've had from terminal in a long time!!:-
~ $ sudo apt-get install alsa-utils
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
alsa-utils is already the newest version.
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 3 not upgraded.
Does that look right to you?

brianL · 12-07-2010, 10:08 AM

That means you've already got alsa-utils. So why can't it find them?

snowday · 12-07-2010, 10:10 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by hexeta

Wow! that's the first positive response I've had from terminal in a long time!!:-
~ $ sudo apt-get install alsa-utils
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
alsa-utils is already the newest version.
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 3 not upgraded.
Does that look right to you?

Weirder and weirder. What about:

Code:

which alsamixer
which alsaconf

That should give you the full pathname (for example /usr/bin/alsamixer) so try typing that instead of just alsamixer.

If "which" returns nothing then I don't know what to say, maybe Mint is different from other distros in how Alsa is configured and packaged?

hexeta · 12-07-2010, 10:34 AM

Hi reed9, thanks for your patience!
I've cpoied and pasted the big chunk of text into leafpad, named it "soundcard_on" and attempted to save it to /usr/local/sbin, but get an error msg saying:-
"can't open file to write"!

hexeta · 12-07-2010, 10:44 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by snowpine

Weirder and weirder. What about:

Code:

which alsamixer
which alsaconf

That should give you the full pathname (for example /usr/bin/alsamixer) so try typing that instead of just alsamixer.

If "which" returns nothing then I don't know what to say, maybe Mint is different from other distros in how Alsa is configured and packaged?

here's the terminal output:-
~ $ which alsamixer
/usr/bin/alsamixer
hexeta@hexeta-desktop ~ $ which alsaconf
Is that significant!

snowday · 12-07-2010, 10:51 AM

OK, now we are getting somewhere!

What happens when you type /usr/bin/alsamixer in the terminal? Do you see the mixer?

Also can you copy & paste the output of:

Code:

$PATH

Mine looks like this (I'm not using Mint though):

Code:

/home/snowpine/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/bin/X11:/usr/games: No such file or directory

Note the /usr/bin which allows me to run apps like alsamixer without typing the full pathname.

If your $PATH is messed up, let me know and we can fix it.

In the meantime you should be able to run apps in the terminal by typing their full pathname (determined using the "which" command).

reed9 · 12-07-2010, 10:53 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by hexeta

Hi reed9, thanks for your patience!
I've cpoied and pasted the big chunk of text into leafpad, named it "soundcard_on" and attempted to save it to /usr/local/sbin, but get an error msg saying:-
"can't open file to write"!

Yes, if you're going to save it directly into /usr/local/sbin, you'll need to open the text editor as root

Code:

gksudo leafpad

My original instructions were to save it to your home directory and move it to the new location with sudo

Code:

sudo mv soundcard_on /usr/sbin/local

Note if you name it soundcard_on vs soundcard-on to change the name everywhere else in the instructions as well.

hexeta · 12-07-2010, 10:53 AM

OMG!
I've just opened /usr/bin expecting to find one entry "alsamixer"but my HDD was spinning for a good two minutes before it opened the bin....my God! it's like the Windows Sys32 folder!, it just goes on and on!
It is certainly there!

That's good isn't it?

hexeta · 12-07-2010, 10:58 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by reed9

Yes, if you're going to save it directly into /usr/local/sbin, you'll need to open the text editor as root

Code:

gksudo leafpad

My original instructions were to save it to your home directory and move it to the new location with sudo

Code:

sudo mv soundcard_on /usr/sbin/local

Note if you name it soundcard_on vs soundcard-on to change the name everywhere else in the instructions as well.

Hmm.. see what I mean!
I'm a danger to my self and all around!
OK, Ill save it to my home directory, and I'll change the name to "soundcard-on"

Just tried what you say and this is the response:-
mv: cannot stat `soundcard_on': No such file or directory

Notice that for some reason terminal command named soundcard_on not what I changed it to (-on), so I re did the command, but the result is exactly the same! what's wrong?

brianL · 12-07-2010, 10:58 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by hexeta

here's the terminal output:-
~ $ which alsamixer
/usr/bin/alsamixer

Same as Slackware. So the mystery remains, why did you get "not found" before?

Quote:

Originally Posted by hexeta

hexeta@hexeta-desktop ~ $ which alsaconf
Is that significant!

Try:

Code:

whereis alsaconf

This is what I get:

Code:

bash-4.1$ whereis alsaconf
alsaconf: /usr/sbin/alsaconf /usr/man/man8/alsaconf.8.gz /usr/share/man/man8/alsaconf.8.gz /usr/X11/man/man8/alsaconf.8.gz

And it's a bash script:

Code:

bash-4.1$ file /usr/sbin/alsaconf
/usr/sbin/alsaconf: a /bin/bash script text executable

snowday · 12-07-2010, 11:02 AM

BrianL, it is a good suggestion, but I am not sure whether Mint uses alsaconf. I don't have it on my Debian machines, and Mint is based on Ubuntu which is based on Debian, so...

brianL · 12-07-2010, 11:07 AM

I think I've always got sound OK automatically when I've run Ubuntu or Debian...not sure though, can't really remember.

hexeta · 12-07-2010, 11:12 AM

I notice that opening the properties for the "soundcard-on" file, I can tick the option to make the file executable,....would that enable me to move it to it's intended destination more successfully?

snowday · 12-07-2010, 11:16 AM

I just booted up Linux Mint Fluxbox edition to check for you. alsaconf is neither installed nor available from the repositories. alsamixer runs OK from the terminal.

My educated guess at this point is that it's a bug specific to the LXDE edition related to the $PATH variable (see my post #66).

hexeta · 12-07-2010, 11:19 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by brianL

I think I've always got sound OK automatically when I've run Ubuntu or Debian...not sure though, can't really remember.

I might be talking a load of B*ll*x brian but as far as I have un-earthed, it's a peculiarity of the Thinkpad which has an unusual marriage of chips which confuses the hell out of most linux distro's ....or so Im lead to believe.

Story of my life I'm afraid,......if there is something that will react in an unexpected way, it must be mine