Running Linux, 5th Edition - Matthias Kalle Dalheimer [161]
Installation and configuration
In this section we discuss how to install and configure a sound card under Linux.
The amount of work you have to do depends on your Linux distribution. As Linux matures, some distributions are now providing automatic detection and configuration of sound cards. The days of manually setting card jumpers and resolving resource conflicts are becoming a thing of the past as sound cards become standardized on the PCI bus. If you are fortunate enough that your sound card is detected and working on your Linux distribution, the material in this section won't be particularly relevant because it has all been done for you automatically.
Some Linux distributions also provide a sound configuration utility such as sndconfig that will attempt to detect and configure your sound card, usually with some user intervention. You should consult the documentation for your system and run the supplied sound configuration tool, if any, and see if it works.
If you have an older ISA or ISA PnP card, or if your card is not properly detected, you will need to follow the manual procedure we outline here. These instructions also assume you are using the OSS/Free sound drivers. If you are using ALSA, the process is similar, but if you are using commercial drivers (OSS/4Front or a vendor-supplied driver), you should consult the document that comes with the drivers, because the process may be considerably different.
The information here also assumes you are using Linux on an x86 architecture system. There is support for sound on other CPU architectures, but not all drivers are supported and there will likely be some differences in device names and other things.
Collecting hardware information
Presumably you already have a sound card installed on your system. If not, you should go ahead and install one. If you have verified that the card works with another operating system on your computer, that will assure you that any problem you encounter on Linux is caused by software at some level.
You should identify what type of card you have, including manufacturer and model. Determine if it is an ISA, ISA PnP , or PCI card. If the card has jumpers, you should note the settings. If you know what resources (IRQ, I/O address, DMA channels) the card is currently using, note that information as well.
If you don't have all this information, don't worry. You should be able to get by without it; you just may need to do a little detective work later. On laptops or systems with on-board sound hardware, for example, you won't have the luxury of being able to look at a physical sound card.
Configuring ISA Plug and Play (optional)
Modern PCI bus sound cards do not need any configuration. The older ISA bus sound cards were configured by setting jumpers. ISA PnP cards are configured under Linux using the ISA Plug and Play utilities. If you aren't sure if you have an ISA PnP sound card, try running the command pnpdump and examining the output for anything that looks like a sound card. Output should include lines like the following for a typical sound card:
# Card 1: (serial identifier ba 10 03 be 24 25 00 8c 0e)
# Vendor Id CTL0025, Serial Number 379791851, checksum 0xBA.
# Version 1.0, Vendor version 1.0
# ANSI string -->Creative SB16 PnP<--
The general process for configuring ISA PnP devices is as follows:
Save any existing /etc/isapnp.conf file.
Generate a configuration file using the command pnpdump >/etc/isapnp.conf.
Edit the file, uncommenting the lines for the desired device settings.
Run the isapnp command to configure Plug and Play cards (usually on system startup).
Most modern Linux distributions take care of initializing ISA PnP cards. You may already have a suitable /etc/isapnp.conf file, or it may require some editing.
For more details on configuring