New CorePlus user, sound issues

[MX372]

Hello all,

Recently decided to try out CorePlus v5.4 on a 10-year-old Sony VAIO VGN-T150 (Pentium M 1.1 ghx/512mb RAM/4gb CF card as HDD). Installed ok, seems really fast for the most part.

I installed FF, Flash 11, VLC, MC, PCManFM, alsamixer, and a few other extensions.

I seem to have no sound. No sound in VLC, no sound in FF on YT. I have the Sony boot sound when it first boots, but that's about it.

Since I'm really not that familiar with the CL in Linux, and have been using mostly LXLE 12.05 on this machine (when it had a 40gb HDD installed), I'm really not sure what to do next. I did run alsamixer and adjusted the sliders (they were all at zero), but that did nothing.

So, any help with fixing this issue would be appreciated.

Also, please steer me in the right direction to getting up to speed on the CLI and Linux in general, anything I can read online or whatever to learn, besides using Google (what helped you in your early days of Linux newbiness?). I downloaded the book "Into the Core" and am reading that for now.

My goal is to 1) continue to use this ancient beast (it was an ultrabook in it's day, after all) as long as I can, and 2) get the same level of functionality out of TC as I had in LXLE (obviously, with less eye candy). If I can't, then I'll go back to LXLE and just deal with the performance hit that running a larger distro has.

That means I need to be able to easily (preferably with the GUI):

1. view the contents of removable media
2. find and install new applications (or extensions, as they are called in TC)
3. browse the web and watch YT videos (wirelessly, of course)
4. complete basic wordprocessing, spreadsheet, etc (Office) tasks
5. check email
6. print wirelessly to my HP printer
7. view and edit pictures
8. burn CD/DVD's and watch DVD's

I want to learn, so I don't mind having to do things in the CL; I just am not familiar enough with it to get far on my own.....

Thanks!

[gerald_clark]

Start with the book. ( link is on top of home page. )

[core-user]

I used RUTE to help me in my early days.
http://rute.2038bug.com/index.html.gz

[beerstein]

Hi:
There is some info here on the forum. Just google "tiny core linux alsa sound" keywords.Start with installing alsa and alsa-config. and try to play a test sound file (.wav) format.
$ aplay soundfile.wav
there is also a speker-test, just type:
$ speaker-test -h
to see the options
alsa.tcz gives you alsamixer too. Try to start alsamixer and see wheter main and/or pcm have sound levels selected.
Lok for the alsasound file in /usr/local/etc/init.d/ folder.
This file is in the same folder where cups and openssh are located.
Download a sample .wav file from the net, there are many out there

keep me posted about your progress.

[Misalf]

There have been some posts about ALSA not working in recent versions of Core, where all that was needed was  alsa-config.tcz  to be loaded OnBoot.

Maybe  alsa-config.tcz  should be added to  alsa.tcz.dep  (possibly with a note in alsa.tcz.info saying this dependency is not always needed and can be removed from the alsa.tcz.dep file if desired)?
Or somehow making new users to RTFM (info file / Apps Info). q:

[Juanito]

You could also use the latest version of tinycore, 6.3, rather than 5.4

[Misalf]

1. view the contents of removable media

I use Tiny Core's MountTool (in wbar by default) for mounting and Xfe for file browsing.

2. find and install new applications (or extensions, as they are called in TC)

Tiny Core's Apps tool (in wbar by default).

3. browse the web and watch YT videos (wirelessly, of course)

firefox.tcz, flash11.tcz (created by getFlash11.tcz) and wifi works too.

4. complete basic wordprocessing, spreadsheet, etc (Office) tasks

LibreOffice 4.4.0.3 is in 6.x repo.

5. check email

I use Thunderbird.

6. print wirelessly to my HP printer

Don't know.

7. view and edit pictures

Viewnior and GIMP.

8. burn CD/DVD's and watch DVD's

flburn and brasero are available in the 6.x repo.
Don't know about DVD but VLC should do.


I think you should be able to do all of those things using Tiny Core. Especially since you're willing to learn.
About getting used to the command line, I'd say you pretty much cannot live without the man pages (man.tcz + man-pages.tcz + ANY_EXTENSION-doc.tcz).
If you can't find a manual for a certain program, I'd suggest  www.tldp.org (The Linux Documentation Project).

[MX372]

Hi:
There is some info here on the forum. Just google "tiny core linux alsa sound" keywords.Start with installing alsa and alsa-config. and try to play a test sound file (.wav) format.
$ aplay soundfile.wav
there is also a speker-test, just type:
$ speaker-test -h
to see the options
alsa.tcz gives you alsamixer too. Try to start alsamixer and see wheter main and/or pcm have sound levels selected.
Lok for the alsasound file in /usr/local/etc/init.d/ folder.
This file is in the same folder where cups and openssh are located.
Download a sample .wav file from the net, there are many out there

keep me posted about your progress.

Downloaded a .wav file, tried:

aplay adverb.wav

No sound.

Tried speaker-test -w, adverb.wav

No sound, but terminal window indicates some activity to attempt to play sound.

alsamixer shows everything at zero, but changing the values has no effect.

verified alsasound file present in /usr/local/etc/init.d/ folder. (well, looks like a shortcut/symbolic link in PCManFM).

So, no luck so far.

To everyone else: thanks for the suggestions, I will heed your advice. I added alsa-config.tcz to onboot.lst (alsa,tcz and alsa-plugins.tcz were already there), as suggested, rebooted, but still nothing even after opening alsamixer and adjusting master/master mono/PCM/CD to 100.

I tried v6.0 first (I had it on a disc), but had issues with FF, Libreoffice, and Chromium not opening from the wbar; research indicated that 6.0 may have some teething issues. I was not even aware that v6.3 was out, so maybe I will go give it a shot....

[MX372]

Misalf,

I noticed in 6.0 that I couldn't seem to be able to mount my DVD drive (with a disc in it, obviously) either, another reason I installed 5.4. I'm having no issue with that in 5.4, except that the eject button on the drive doesn't function. Would like to fix that.

For wireless printing, I *should* be able to use hplip (I think) to do it, since if I remember correctly, that is what I installed on my LXLE (and Lubuntu, which I used prior to LXLE) install.

I'm familiar with all the applications you listed and have used them; the one thing I've found is that sometimes they are not as "polished" as a retail version of the same TYPE of application (i.e., I used Nero for burning) for Windows, or sometimes have bugs or issues that cause them to not function correctly for a certain task.

I have used man pages before, but they are not always 100% helpful (sometimes you need a guiding hand!). I will certainly check out tldp.org though...thanks!

[Misalf]

Uhm, can't remember ever mounting a DVD in Tiny Core. Flash drives rule. (:
Data or Movie DVD?

[Misalf]

Now playing a DVD Movie via Mplayer on another box - TC 6.2.
The mount point is  /mnt/sr0  not something like  /media/dvd  as you might expect coming from ubuntu.

[Rich]

Hi MX372

still nothing even after opening alsamixer and adjusting master/master mono/PCM/CD to 100.

Back those down to 70 until you get some sound. The mixer has mute functions for the inputs and output, check those.

[MX372]

Misalf - data DVD-RW. The mount point appears to be the same as you indicated, /mnt/sr0, which as you stated is different than *buntu flavors

Rich - backed them to 70, the only thing muted was External. Unmuted, no difference. I know the speakers work because I get the Sony splash screen sound on boot.

So, I'm going to try v6.3 on live cd, see if I have sound. If so, I'll install 6.3 and go from there. Not that I want to call it quits, but I didn't even realize v6.3 was out, and I only went to 5.4 because I was having issues with extensions in 6.0. Maybe that is fixed in 6.3

Thanks for the help though!

[MX372]

UPDATE: I tried 6.3 from a live cd, but same issue. Since 5.4 is still on the CF card (HDD), it still has everything I've done so far available, so I checked all the same stuff and everything looks the same. Would installing it to the HDD change anything (other than I'd have to install all the extensions again)?

I'm really at a loss on why the sound is not working.

[Juanito]

It would be good if you could run lspci/lsusb to confirm what sound hardware you have.

Maybe you could remove all alsa extensions from "onboot", reboot and then load one by one from the command line to troubleshoot.

At the moment, alsa is a dep of alsa-config and I wonder if in your case alsa-config needs to be loaded before alsa is loaded.

You could try copying alsa-config to /tmp and then "tce-load -i /tmp/alsa-config" (this will load it without loading alsa or pci-utils). Once that is done, load alsa and pci-utils normally.

Next run alsamixer, check there are no bars with an "m" for mute under them and that all the bars are set to +/-50%.

Finally, run speaker-test as per the instructions in the alsa-info file.

BTW - there is a lengthy thread on WiFi printing using cups/hplip (it works for me), but first you need to check that your printer is supported on the hplip web site.