I’ve got an old Dell laptop here which I’ve randomly decided to turn into an emulator for retro gaming goodness.

I’ve installed Ubuntu 14.04 server for a minimalist install, got Samba going to copy stuff to it easily, and that’s all good. Added startx (which frankly confuses the carp out of me) as it seemed to be a prerequisite for Fuse SDL. After much wailing and gnashing of teeth I’ve got that working too and the emulator runs nicely.

Problem is, there’s no sound. As a Wintel bod I don’t know how to even begin troubleshooting this, and all the guides I can find online relate to things like frobbing the mixer to route sound over HDMI on a Pi or some such.

Help me STW, you’re my only hope.

Could be that since you have server the repositories are different? I’d imagine that altering your repositories to the standard ones might give results, I’d try a live USB first to confirm though.

Have you seen this?

How to Resolve no sound problem on Ubuntu 14.04, 13.10, 13.04 and Older versions

Answer largely seems to be – “turn it up” 🙂

I would assume Ubuntu server doesn’t have any sound preconfigured – it’s not really necessary for a server. Manually configuring it is likely to be a nightmare. I’d probably go for a lightweight desktop install of Ubuntu e.g. perhaps with XFCE, which I imagine will have sound working without any configuration required.

Agreed – it’s unlikely the server edition would have the required drivers for sound as it’s not really needed. Most people would just interface with it over the CLI.

Before you do anything as drastic as reinstalling; try installing the pulseaudio package..

sudo apt-get install pulseaudio

Oh; and the repositories for server and desktop are exactly the same. It’s just which bits are installed by default that differ.

Looks like you might need to add yourself to the audio group?
http://askubuntu.com/questions/8362/setting-up-audio-on-a-server-install

Lubuntu is good but can be a bit of a pain when it comes to troubleshooting. Nothing major but things are just ever so slightly different which makes quick fixes a PITA.

Wait, XFCE would be Xubuntu wouldn’t it?

wouldn’t have picked server for a minimal install, but usually there’s a minimal iso and work from that.

tbh, just installing the ubuntu desktop metapackage (for ubuntu’s own desktop), or xubuntu-desktop, or kubuntu-desktop, or… depending on which GUI desktop environment you want, should pull in *everything* you need, and give the equivalent of a fresh ubuntu (plus some bonus server stuff).

edit: and add the switch –noinstallrecommends (something like that) so it only installs stuff that’s needed, and not all the other stuff it thinks you really ought to have as well

Reinstall the desktop version would be my advice. Or spend the next few weeks apt-get’ing all the libraries your emulators are going to need anyway.

Another vote for the “do the default Ubuntu install” thing – it doesn’t actually install that much unnecessary crap, and if you’re a linux newb it would be a lot easier…

Could be that since you have server the repositories are different?

Different from what?

Far as I’m aware, the only difference between Server and Desktop is in the amount of guff that gets installed on a default install.

Have you seen this?

Answer largely seems to be – “turn it up”

That’s all a bit GUI and I don’t have one, but the theory might be, erm, sound.

I would assume Ubuntu server doesn’t have any sound preconfigured – it’s not really necessary for a server.

Trousers. You may have a point there. I was just trying to get away with having the bare minimum for a short boot time. I’ll have a rummage.

try installing the pulseaudio package.

[quote]Looks like you might need to add yourself to the audio group?[/quote]

I’ll try those too. Ta.

do the default Ubuntu install

Yeah, I hear you. But part of the reasoning for doing this though (other than an irrational desire to play Jet Set Willy) was to use it as an opportunity to play with Linux. I’m not completely green, but I need more experience and familiarity than I currently have. I’m trying to remove my reliance on a GUI as much as possible; I’m not necessarily aiming for ‘easy’ so much as getting a better understanding of what’s going on.

Food for thought, thanks all.

Is the correct answer. I think 100% of the time I’ve had no sound it’s been because pulseaudio wasn’t installed (it tends to bring in all the other required stuff as dependencies).

Though to be honest I’d also agree with everybody else that for your requirements it makes far more sense to have a workstation desktop install – I use server installs all the time, but only for when I don’t want to do any graphical or sound stuff. I can’t see any obvious disadvantages – something like Lubuntu (which would be my choice if using Ubuntu, though personally I prefer the RHEL family, ie Fedora LXDE) doesn’t need much more disk space or overhead than a server install, and you’re probably adding all that back in anyway by the time you’ve got stuff working. You can – and I do – use a workstation install to act as a server.

So install desktop and open a terminal window to do stuff. Which is what I do all the time – very rarely use the GUI for anything, but it’s there if I need it, and it means you have all the multimedia stuff installed.

Yeah, but then it’s too easy just to go ‘click’. It’s like knowing you’ve got cake.

Bin everything and go down this route instead

Lakka

Hah. I might have a play with that later, ta.

So, looking at prezet’s link, it’s talking about “alsa”. Googled to find out what that is.

ALSA is part of the Linux kernel, while PulseAudio is middleware, a part of the lower levels of the desktop stack. So is SDL.

…

In a typical installation scenario under Linux, the user configures ALSA to use a virtual device provided by PulseAudio. Thus, applications using ALSA will output sound to PulseAudio, which then uses ALSA itself to access the real sound card.

So that makes sense, assuming that ALSA has found the card in the first place. How do I verify that? Ah, Google, right.

“So is SDL” – is this pertinent? The emulator is an SDL variant; does that mean it should talk directly to ALSA? SDL is basically Linux’s answer to DirectX, right? Ie, the app will be using SDL instead of PulseAudio?

I was just trying to get away with having the bare minimum for a short boot time

I’d suggest Lubuntu. It’s so much lighter weight than Windows that boot time will be quick whatever. You’ve given yourself a world of pain for little gain 🙂

It’s like knowing you’ve got cake.

You think you have cake. You may well be wrong.

(-:

Following the suggestions at https://askubuntu.com/questions/8362/setting-up-audio-on-a-server-install

The various commands return what look to be valid responses, it’s finding the hardware etc.

Adding myself to the user group “audio” solved my problem. I determined this was the problem when

sudo aplay -l
returned results about the audio card, but

aplay -l
returned nothing.

Command to run:

sudo useradd -aG audio your_username
You have to log out to get the change working.

This is what I’m seeing too, though the suggested command syntax isn’t correct. Digging.

Ah. Usermod is what I need it seems.

was gonna say usermod -a -G …
(but don’t have a linux box handy to try)

PS if the GUI was there it’s just some ticky boxes 😉 (and that image above is then nonsense)

(and that image above is then nonsense)

Yeah, the chauffeur is missing from the first image.

It’s the future 😉

Well, the ALSA mixer control was set to zero, which I’ve now changed. It’s still mute though. What an embuggerance.

What model Dell? Just in case you are banging your head against a wall (thoguh it sounds like you’re detecting the hardware now?)

could be the pulseaudio volume control ? Assuming you’ve installed pulseaudio; try install puvacontrol which will give you a pulseaudio mixer gui

Swearwords. Sussed it.

Changing the volume in alsamixer is all well and good, but it transpires that [MM] at the bottom means ‘muted’ irrespective of any little coloured bars above it. Pressing M changes it it [OO] and, hey, audio!

I think what I’m going to do next is flatten it and rebuild so that I can work out which steps were unnecessary.

Growl.

cougar if you want to get away from the gui but still wants some graphical interaction at times check out webmin so you can access the server from a remote browser
mostly i use putty from windows to ssh to the server though
for old laptops i prefer xubuntu for the gui

Is what I mostly do – though I’m mostly working with several server VMs, and it’s not so relevant for what Cougar’s doing where he kind of needs to be on the machine it’s running on.