Soundserver crashes at boot - no sound playing video files

Membrax · Post by **Membrax** » Sun May 28, 2006 5:53 am

Hi Folks !

been "playing" too much with Synaptic and uninstalled probably too many packages than I should have done.

As soon as KDE interface is displayed a crash report window appears and informs me that the Soundserver has crashed.

Consequently I still do have sound while playing XMMS (rather strange if you consider that the Soundserver has crashed, but still). Amarok just shuts itself down after I'm selecting the mp3 file it is supposed to play.
Additional nightmare with my video players (Helix, Kaffeine, mplayer, Kaboodle, ...) : I get the video -sometimes- but never get any sound anymore.

Is there somewhere a list of minimal although mandatory packages in order to have full sound support in any multimedia application ?

Tux · Post by **Tux** » Sun May 28, 2006 12:52 pm

Just use synaptic to (re)install artsd and it should restore the KDE soundserver and dependancies.

Ice9 · Post by **Ice9** » Sun May 28, 2006 2:40 pm

Or even better, ditch that piece of crap arts in the control center (disable the sound system - under sound and multimedia) and use alsa all the way!
Amarok can be configured to use alsa.

insomnia · Post by **insomnia** » Mon May 29, 2006 9:40 am

I don't like aRts either (it will probably be removed in KDE4).
If you need multiple sound streams, you can use Dmix for that.

Membrax · Post by **Membrax** » Wed May 31, 2006 2:55 am

Well, nothing did it. I uninstalled aRts, tried again, nothing. I reinstalled aRts, uninstalled alsa, same thing. reinstalled alsa only, tried reinstalling aRts only, tried both. Nothing.
I also uninstalled mplayer to reinstall it ... gasp gasp, mplayer (or gmplayer) is nowhere to be found in the usual repositories. And mplayerhq.hu is not alive anymore, the website still exists but is not kept alive, it's been deserted.
Is there somewhere a huge package list I could rely on to reinstall all the stuff I need in order to play movies, and with sound as well ?

By the way, strange to me XMMS never left me alone. this one still works nicely. Probably because it uses the OSS output.

H E L P
My exorcist is unreachable for the moment

Ice9 · Post by **Ice9** » Wed May 31, 2006 1:12 pm

deb ftp://ftp.nerim.net/debian-marillat/ sid main
Add this repository for mplayer!

As fo your sound problem, have you tried running alsaconf?

Code: Select all

# alsaconf

insomnia · Post by **insomnia** » Wed May 31, 2006 2:41 pm

Are you using Sarge or Etch/Sid ?

All I did with Apt was:
apt-get install alsa-tools alsa-oss

Next alsaconf configured ALSA for me.
(with many apps like mplayer, you'll have the change the sound output to alsa in the app itself)

To get oss emulation I run modprobe snd_pcm_oss manually.
(add it in /etc/modules to make it permanent).

Notice that you can't have more than one sound stream at the same time without a working mixer. Since I highly dislike aRts, I use ALSA's Dmix for this (also with KDE apps).
Here are some good howtos on Dmix (including how to use it with KDE apps like Amarok and many other examples):
http://alsa.opensrc.org/index.php?page=DmixPlugin
http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_ALSA_sound ... mix_device

insomnia · Post by **insomnia** » Wed May 31, 2006 2:51 pm

Ice9 wrote:deb ftp://ftp.nerim.net/debian-marillat/ sid main
Add this repository for mplayer!

Those are the old Marillat sources.list entries.
You now have to use:
deb http://www.debian-multimedia.org sid main
The old ones still exist but don't get updated anymore.

http://debian.video.free.fr/

Ice9 · Post by **Ice9** » Wed May 31, 2006 2:59 pm

Hey thanks Insomnia, guess I missed that one.