# No sound with alsa

## danky

Since I upgraded to gentoo-sources 2.6.18 r3, and the new udev which replaced coldplug alsa does not seem to work.  It loads alsa at boot and if i do a /etc/init.d/alsasound status it shows alsa running, but when I go to run mplayer using alsa I get an error saying "Could not open/initialize audio device -> no sound".  Alsa also does not work for any games or other programs that use sound.  Once in a while if i am lucky I will get sound on a cold boot after the pc has sat for a while.  But once I reboot it the sound is gone.  Note that I can always get sound in mplayer when I switch the audio to use SDL using the default settings instead of alsa, so I know it isnt faulty hardware.  I have 2 sound cards on my system one is a soundblaster audigy 2 platnium and the other is an onboard via.  I am not sure if this started up after the kernel upgrade or when i did an emerge -avtDNu world right after I finished compiling the kernel and it replaced coldplug with udev.  The sound worked fine with sources 2.6.18 r2 and coldplug initializing the devices.  Anyone have any ideas?

Thanks

edit: I wanted to note that I have alsa and the 2 sound card drivers compiled as modules in the kernel.

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## loki99

You need to use this version of alsa till upstream releases a new version that will work with kernel-2.6.18 and later.   :Wink: 

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## danky

I have another pc set up the same way and alsa works fine on it compiled as a module in the kernel.  Are the kernel drivers packed in 2.6.18 r3 not compatable?

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## loki99

Ooops sorry (it was late), it seems only to affect 2.6.19. I took the info from over here and here

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## dj_farid

I have the same problem.

Sometimes there is an error message on boot about alsa, usually not.

Even though there is no error message, alsa does weird things. I have three soundcards in my machine. Alsa seems to change the identity of my cards every time I boot the machine. I have to change the alsa device in audacious and mplayer after every reboot.

It didn't use to be this way before.

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## Backiz

I also have the same problem, using emu10k1 with a soundblaster 5.1

for me this started after the new udev replaced coldplug

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## kanttu

I think I have the same problem. I have integrated Intel sound card and augigy2, and I prefer audigy2 as a primary card but even though I have configured alsa correctly, the order of these cards is wrong until I manually run /etc/init.d/alsasound restart

I have sought solution for this case for three months at least and still no dice.

I know it's something about some sound kernel modules getting loaded before others, and that somehow mixes the expected order of the sound devices.

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## dj_farid

I think I fixed this problem with changing this line in /etc/conf.d/rc:

```
RC_PLUG_SERVICES="!*"
```

Got the idea from this thread that I found:

https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-p-3534506.html#3534506

(I also unemerged hotplug) I hope that there won't be any new problems popping up because of this...

EDIT:

Unfortunately it was not enough to make it work.

```
RC_COLDPLUG="no"
```

 had to be done also.

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## Backiz

thanks that solved it for me too (but i did not unmerge coldplug)

I do not reboot very often so it may take a while if I run into any other problems caused by this  :Razz: 

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## Backiz

well this did only solve the issue that alsa was not loaded on boot.

but it messed up kamix, it only finds the integrated sound card on the motherboard and not my soundblaster live which i use now. 

this means i can not set sound levels (some channels give sound, but its either full volume or mute  :Razz:  )

I'll dig into it later when i have time tomorrow

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