ALSA support page

• Check your card by some low-level utility (like aplay):
  "$aplay /usr/share/sounds/phone.wav" - play test sound on your default card
  "$aplay -D hw:0 /usr/share/sounds/phone.wav" - play test sound on your first card without any software plugins (use -D hw:1 for the second one and so on)
  
  
• Check if mixer channels are unmuted - all channels on soundcard are muted after boot. System-config-soundcard uses command line utility "alsaunmute" for setting up your card and you can do it manually by the "alsamixer" utility. Run it from console and raise/unmute all playback channels (like Master/Front/Center/PCM and so on) or check some switches (like "External Amplifier").
  
  Some tips for the alsaunmute/alsamixer utility:
• You can get list of your card with "$aplay -l" or "$cat /proc/asound/cards"
• Run "$alsaunmute 0" for unmuting the first card, "$alsaunmute 1" for the second one and so on.
• Run "$alsamixer -c 0" for setting up the first card, "$alsamixer -c 1" for the second one and so on.
• Use "$alsamixer -V All" or "$alsamixer -V Capture" for setting the capture volume (and with "-c n" for specified card).
  
  
• Check module parameters for sound card driver
  There are module parameters you can supply to sound driver. You can specify the right type of your sound device, used resources and so on by them.  Please search for them on the Internet (forums, resources, ...).
  
  
• Install new drivers & user-space packages
  Kernels shipped with RHEL/FC usually contain old ALSA drivers and additional fixes may be available in the new ones. Here is a how-to for using the latest ALSA drivers in current RH distros.
  
  ALSA sound system consists of two major parts - kernel drivers known as "alsa-driver" and a user-space interface packaged in alsa-lib. There are extra utilites and helper applications stored in alsa-utils, alsa-plugins, too.
  
  You can use a precompiled driver/package(s) or compile a package for your system.
  
  
• You can find the precompiled packages on external sites:
  
  
• ATrpms for F7
• alsa-drivers - http://atrpms.net/dist/f7/alsa-driver/
• ATrpms for FC-6
• alsa-drivers - http://atrpms.net/dist/fc6/alsa-driver/
• alsa-libs - http://atrpms.net/dist/fc6/alsa-lib/
• ATrpms for FC-5
• alsa-drivers - http://atrpms.net/dist/fc5/alsa-driver/
• alsa-libs - http://atrpms.net/dist/fc5/alsa-lib/
• ATrpms for RHEL-4
  
• alsa-drivers - http://atrpms.net/dist/el4/alsa-driver/
• alsa-libs - http://atrpms.net/dist/el4/alsa-lib/

• If you'd like to compile it by yourself, check these steps:
  
  
  1. Install devel package for your current kernel , it's the kernel-devel-xxx.rpm package. You can get it here:
     RHEL-4 - http://ftp.redhat.com/pub/redhat/linux/
     FC-5/6,F7 - command "yum install kernel-devel" on terminal should install that for you
     
     
  2. Download the alsa-driver tarball:
     RHEL-4 package - alsa-driver-1.0.13.RHEL4.tar.bz2
     FC-5 / FC-6 / F7 package - alsa-driver-1.0.14.tar.bz2
     
  
  
  3. Extract this package somewhere ($tar xjf  alsa-driver-xxxx.tar.bz2)
  4. Configure and compile this package (do "$./configure" and "$make" in alsa-driver-xxxx directory)
  5. Log-in as root and the install drivers ("#make install" in alsa-driver-xxxx directory)
  6. Reboot your box and check sound. If you hear nothing, check the alsamixer or alsaunmute. If it doesn't help, proceed to next steps.
     
  7. Compile and install the apropriate alsa-lib and alsa-utils packages
     (use #rpmbuild --rebuild alsa-xxxx.src.rpm and update packages from /usr/src/redhat/RPMS/,
     you may use "#rpm -Uhv --oldpackage alsa-lib-xxx.rpm alsa-utils-xxx.rpm" )
     
     RHEL-4 packages - alsa-lib-1.0.13-1.src.rpm, alsa-utils-1.0.13-1.RHEL4.src.rpm
     FC-5 / FC-6 / F7 packages - alsa-lib-1.0.14a-0.6.src.rpm, alsa-utils-1.0.14-0.8.src.rpm
     
     
  8. Check the alsamixer utility and set up your card.
     
     
• And finally, if the problem still persists, report it to ALSA project (https://bugtrack.alsa-project.org/alsa-bug/), don't forget to attach some useful information (like /root/scsound.log, type of your card/machine)