Running Linux, 5th Edition - Matthias Kalle Dalheimer [177]
No sound is heard but there are no error messages
If sound programs appear to be playing but nothing is heard, it is probably a problem with the mixer settings, or a problem with the connection of the speakers.
Unable to record audio
This could indicate a problem with the mixer settings. You need to set the levels and select the input device. You might also have a bad microphone or be using the wrong input jack on the sound card.
Device busy error
Either you have a device conflict, or another application is using the sound devices. This could be because you are running a sound server program, such as esd or artsd.
No sound when playing audio CD
To play audio CDs, you need a cable from the CD-ROM drive to your sound card. Make sure you have selected CD input using a mixer program. Try connecting headphones to the front-panel jack of the CD-ROM drive. If you can hear audio, the problem is not with the drive itself. If you can't hear audio from the headphones, the problem is with the drive or CD player program. (Note that some newer CD player programs support digital playback without a cable, but you may need to configure them to operate in this mode.)
Cannot play MIDI files
Some MIDI applications work only with a sound card that has an FM synthesizer, and not all cards have this hardware (or the kernel driver for the sound card may not support it). Try using another MIDI application that supports using the standard audio device.
References
Listed here are a few sources of information related to multimedia under Linux:
Sound and MIDI Software For Linux, a directory of multimedia applications and resources
http://sound.condorow.net
SourceForge, the world's largest open source software development web site
http://www.sourceforge.net
Freshmeat, a huge directory of open source and commercial software projects
http://freshmeat.net
The Linux Sound HOWTO, available from the Linux Documentation Project
http://www.tlpd.org
The Linux CD-ROM HOWTO, available from the Linux Documentation Project
http://www.tlpd.org
The ALSA Project
http://www.alsa-project.org
4Front Technologies
http://www.opensound.com
The KDE project
http://www.kde.org
The GNOME project
http://www.gnome.org
The WINE project
http://www.winehq.com
CodeWeavers, developers of CrossOver
http://www.codeweavers.com
The ReWind project
http://rewind.sourceforge.net
TransGaming Technologies, developers of Cedega
http://www.transgaming.com
Linux Multimedia Guide (O'Reilly)
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/multilinux/
Linux Music and Sound (No Starch Press)
http://www.nostarch.com/lms.htm
Part II. System Administration
In this part of the book we show you how to set up your Linux system and its environment to do pretty important things such as printing and sharing files with other systems; we also show you how to take care of your system in other ways. If you have more than one person using the system, the material in this section is particularly important. It's also important if your distribution failed to get networking up and running, or if you want to run any of the servers in Part IV of the book.
Chapter 10: System Administration Basics
Chapter 11: Managing Users, Groups, and Permissions
Chapter 12: Installing, Updating, and Compiling Programs
Chapter 13: Networking
Chapter 14: Printing
Chapter 15: File Sharing
Chapter 16: The X Window System
Chapter 17: System Start and Shutdown
Chapter 18: Configuring and Building the Kernel
Chapter 19: Text Editing
Chapter 20: Text Processing
Chapter 10. System Administration Basics
If you're running your own Linux system, one of the first tasks at hand is to learn the ropes of system administration . You won't be able to get by for long without having to perform some kind of system maintenance, software upgrade, or mere tweaking to keep things in