[Grml] sound appears to be muted

[John G. Heim]

I can't get any sound out of my PC when booted into grml latest release
candidate. I scp'ed a sound file (my dog barking) to the machine and used
aplay to play it. But I didn't hear anything. Sound works when booted into
linux off the hard disk.

grml at grml ~ % aplay rufus.wav
Playing WAVE 'rufus.wav' : Unsigned 8 bit, Rate 22050 Hz, Mono

I also tried loading the speakup_soft module and running espeak. No error
messages appear. Nothing abnormal in the syslog either. That's why I think
sound is muted. What I really need is a command for unmuting a sound card. I
don't know how to do that at the command line. I guess that's technically a
linux question, not a grml question.

[Ulrich Dangel]

Post by John G. Heim
I also tried loading the speakup_soft module and running espeak. No
error messages appear. Nothing abnormal in the syslog either. That's
why I think sound is muted.

It is indeed. I just commited a change to grml-autoconfig which should
take care of this issue.

To test the fix (works for me) you can use this iso
http://jenkins.grml.org/job/grml-full-amd64/774/artifact/2011-12-16_11-03-41/grml_isos/autobuild_2011-12-16_11-03-41.iso

Please be aware that this is iso only supports 64bit cpus.

Post by John G. Heim
What I really need is a command for
unmuting a sound card. I don't know how to do that at the command
line. I guess that's technically a linux question, not a grml
question.

You can get a list of mixer controls via:
amixer scontrol

To unmute a specific channel (in this example i unmute master):
amixer set Master unmute

To set the volume to 75% on PCM:
amixer set PCM 75%

Ulrich

[John Heim]

From: "Ulrich Dangel" <mru at grml.org>
To: <grml at ml.grml.org>
Sent: Friday, December 16, 2011 5:25 AM
Subject: Re: [Grml] sound appears to be muted

Post by Ulrich Dangel

Post by John G. Heim
I also tried loading the speakup_soft module and running espeak. No
error messages appear. Nothing abnormal in the syslog either. That's
why I think sound is muted.

It is indeed. I just commited a change to grml-autoconfig which should
take care of this issue.
To test the fix (works for me) you can use this iso
http://jenkins.grml.org/job/grml-full-amd64/774/artifact/2011-12-16_11-03-41/grml_isos/autobuild_2011-12-16_11-03-41.iso

I'm getting a 403 not found error when accessing that URL.

[Ulrich Dangel]

* John Heim wrote [19.12.11 20:02]:
Hi,

Post by John Heim

Post by Ulrich Dangel
http://jenkins.grml.org/job/grml-full-amd64/774/artifact/2011-12-16_11-03-41/grml_isos/autobuild_2011-12-16_11-03-41.iso

I'm getting a 403 not found error when accessing that URL.

Sorry jenkins keeps just the last 10 builded ISOs.

The latest version is
http://jenkins.grml.org/job/grml-full-amd64/799/artifact/2011-12-19_23-04-44/grml_isos/autobuild_2011-12-19_23-04-44.iso
which should beep on the isolinux prompt and play 3 sounds in grub.

If the link is no longer available please go directly to
http://jenkins.grml.org/job/grml-full-amd64/ and just download the
latest ISO. JFTR (for the persons just reading this message) this is
grml 64bit and requires a 64bit cpu.

cheers,
Ulrich

[John G. Heim]

]Sorry, Ulrich, you're goint to get 2 copies of this. Sent the first one to
private email. Sending this one to the list...
From: "Ul at ml.grml.org>
Sent: Monday, December 19, 2011 5:25 PM
Subject: Re: [Grml] sound appears to be muted

Post by Ulrich Dangel
Sorry jenkins keeps just the last 10 builded ISOs.
The latest version is
http://jenkins.grml.org/job/grml-full-amd64/799/artifact/2011-12-19_23-04-44/grml_isos/autobuild_2011-12-19_23-04-44.iso
which should beep on the isolinux prompt and play 3 sounds in grub.

Well, I didn't get the beep at the isolinux prompt but sound is working. I
was able to type in the commands to load the speakup_soft module and
espeakup and got speech. I just waited for the tone, pressed q, and then
typed in 'modprobe speakup_soft; espeakup' Very exciting!

I would like to try it with a USB headset on a machine w/o a sound card. If
that works, you could rescue a server without using a hardware speech
synthesizer. I don't know where I'm going to find a machine like that
though. We have lots of 64 bit servers w/o sound cards but they're all in
production. I can't just boot one of them into grml for testing purposes.
But I'd also hate to find out I can't do that when its already an emergency.

It's not that important to me because I have a hardware speech synth. In the
USA, your employer is required to buy you a speech synth if you need it. But
that kind of thing is a lot easier to say than it is to do. Nobody wants to
go to their boss and say, "Hey thanks for taking a chance on me even though
I'm blind. By the way, you need to shell out $500 for this hardware speech
synthesizer." So a lot of blind people don't have hardware speech synths.
Plus those synths only work on machines with serial ports.

Anyway, personally, I think you guys have done outstanding work. I honestly
think that you may have saved some jobs.

BTW, I'm not sure what you mean by 3 sounds in grub. Is that the tone you
get when grml is finished booting? That's 4 tones so I think you must be
referring to something else.

[Ulrich Dangel]

Post by John G. Heim
Well, I didn't get the beep at the isolinux prompt but sound is working. I
was able to type in the commands to load the speakup_soft module and
espeakup and got speech. I just waited for the tone, pressed q, and then
typed in 'modprobe speakup_soft; espeakup' Very exciting!

Cool. I am not sure but i think beep will use the pcspkr so hopefully
you should hear the beeps even without a configured soundhw.

Post by John G. Heim
I would like to try it with a USB headset on a machine w/o a sound card. If
that works, you could rescue a server without using a hardware speech
synthesizer. I don't know where I'm going to find a machine like that
though. We have lots of 64 bit servers w/o sound cards but they're all in
production. I can't just boot one of them into grml for testing purposes.
But I'd also hate to find out I can't do that when its already an emergency.

JFTR grml will only configure sound cards available at boot time. But
why are you using an USB headset at all? Isn't it enough if you access
the machine remotely via ssh/ipmi/ilo/??

Post by John G. Heim
BTW, I'm not sure what you mean by 3 sounds in grub. Is that the tone you
get when grml is finished booting? That's 4 tones so I think you must be
referring to something else.

Our default bootloader is syslinux/isolinux. If you have a efi
environment we use grub instead of syslinux which will play the 3 beeps
with two of them having the same frequency.
You can also choose to boot grub from the isolinux menu (if the cd stops
spinning it should be in the syslinux/isolinux menu, then press two
times down, enter, one down), or modify grml-live to use grub as a
bootloader.

Ulrich

[John G. Heim]

From: "Ulrich Dangel" <mru at grml.org>
To: <grml at ml.grml.org>

Post by Ulrich Dangel
figure sound cards available at boot time. But
why are you using an USB headset at all? Isn't it enough if you access
the machine remotely via ssh/ipmi/ilo/??

Well, it is possible that the NIC could be bad. I'm just trying to test
everything. I don't have any servers that don't have serial ports so if one
of my servers was down and I couldn't even get a network connection to it,
I'd connect the hardware synth and use speakup. I also have a braille
display so even if the machine didn't have a serial port, I could use
braille. But I'm better equipped than most blind people. I shelled out $2000
of my own money for the synth and the braille display.

Off topic:I have this other pretty cool piece of equipment called a PC
Weasel. Its essentially a PCI VGA card that takes character mode output and
writes it to an on-board serial port. It looks like a VGA card to the host
but it has a serial port for output instead of a VGA port. It really comes
in handy when making bootable CDs. For instance, if I'm remastering the grml
CD and it doesn't even get to the isolinux prompt, I can use this card and a
null modem cable connected to a terminal emulator to see why.