# Need Help with ALSA Sound

## gtroland

Hi Everyone,

I emerged ALSA successfully, but found it did not include the driver I need (VIA8233).  This driver is available in the ALSA Project CVS.  Does anyone know how I implement this driver?  I would like to do it through Portage for consistency.  Is it as simple as doing a make and designating my driver in /etc/modules.autoload?  Or is there a "Portage process" that I should follow?  Not a problem either way, just want to do it right!

Thanks in advance for your help.

- GTR -

Gordon Roland

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## BonezTheGoon

have you tried:

```
modprobe snd-via8233
```

This should work given you have already emerged ALSA.  There are others in the forum that have this working, so I think the current Gentoo  ebuild version of ALSA supports this.

Let me know how it goes!!

Regards,

BonezTheGoon

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## BonezTheGoon

I forgot to mention that you HAVE to emerge ALSA after every kernel rebuild you do.  The modules all go away when you recompile your kernel, so if you have recompiled (or you are not sure) you might try re-emerging ALSA if it gives you any trouble when you try:

```
modprobe snd-via8233
```

Again, hope that helps!!

Regards,

BonezTheGoon

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## tomas

 *Quote:*   

> I forgot to mention that you HAVE to emerge ALSA after every kernel rebuild you do. The modules all go away when you recompile your kernel

 

Yeah; make modules_install cleans out the old modules. I made a copy of the sound and video modules so that I can easily restore them without running emerge again.

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## gtroland

Thanks for the feedback Bonez and Tomas.  Yes, I did try to modprobe snd-via8233.  That's what put me on to the problem that no driver for via8233 was created when I emerged Alsa.  I don't think this is a fault of Gentoo or Portage.  If I'm reading things right on the Alsa-project website, via8233 is supported, but not included in the standard project.  That is: You have to go to the Alsa CVS and specifically download that driver.  I have no issue with having to do that, but I am concerned that I might mess things up if I emerge Alsa, then go back and "make" an additional driver.  Are there any issues with this?  If not, I will just download and make the driver.  Can I incorporate the via8233 driver into my ebuild?  If not I'll just have to be careful if I need to rebuild the system in the future.  My big concern is that I don't want to do something that might mess up my shiny new Gentoo system!  (Yes, I am that happy with it, but I'll save that for the praise forum.)

In any event, I appreciate your advice and hope you can shed some light on this remaining issue.

Thanks again,

- GTR -

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## tomas

Hmm. I checked, and the module is actually included; you should get it when you emerge alsa.

The path is something like: /lib/modules/2.4.19-gentoo-r7/kernel/sound/pci/snd-via8233.o

if the /lib/modules/2.4.19-gentoo-r7/kernel/sound directory doesn't exist, then alsa isn't correctly installed. 

All I can think of is try to re-emerge alsa (which I guess you've tried already). Good luck, anyway!  :Smile: 

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## BonezTheGoon

OK I guess I wasn't clear.  I don't think the info you are getting from ALSA applies to Gentoo.  I think the Gentoo Ebuild supplies support for your audio.  Who ever made the ebuild may have used the ALSA CVS to get it, I don't know.  But check this other thread that indicates someone has this working with the default Gentoo ebuild.

https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=7144&highlight=

I hope that is a little more clear.  I don't think you need to download anything from ALSA, or connect to the CVS tree or anthing like that.  I think you just need to check some of these other threads to see what those before you have done to get thier same hardware working.

Regards,

BonezTheGoon

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## gtroland

Just to be extra sure, I went back and looked again in my kernel/sound/pci directory and, in fact, via8233 was NOT there.  There was a driver for via686, but not the one for which I was looking.  To make a long (and not particularly fascinating) story short, the ebuild for alsa-driver was updated on July 10 from 0.9.0-rc1 to 0.9.0-rc2 so I took a chance and emerged again.  Voila! (as they say over at Mandrake   :Wink:  ) the via8233 is included in that ebuild.  From there I just followed the instructions in Grant Goodyear's excellent "Gentoo Linux Desktop Configuration Guide" and everything fell into place, no muss no fuss.

As a side note, according to the alsa-project the via8233 is still not officially part of the package, so if someone went to the trouble of getting it from the alsa CVS and including it in the alsa-driver package as a result of this thread: Your consideration is much appreciated.  If I just happened to get lucky and the driver ended up in the package fortuitously well, then I'm gratefull for dumb luck   :Razz:  !

Thanks again to everyone for jumping in to help.

- GTR -

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## dmason

Um, I am believing that you are mistaken, that is the via8233a that is not supported fully by alsa at this moment, that is a different chip than the 8233, trust me, I have an 8233a, and tried the 8233 drivers, they didn't really work. and I did my entire install this week, so I am thinking that the newest portage tree has the drivers that you need in alsa. I would say try emerge rsync and then re emerge your alsa drivers, then modprobe the snd-via8233, that way you have the newest alsa release. Hope that this helps, and good luck to you.

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