Arch Sound and kvm problems

Operating Systems & Open Source Linux
1

Hi everyone, 

I have Arch almost how I want it to be, but i have 1 major problem and one little problem. The major problem is the sound. I can't get alsa to work. i installed alsa-utils with pacman and when starting alsa-mixer I get 3 blocks without a bar to set the sound level. pressing f6 and changing to a different device i get a screen full of bars that i can adjust including master. when i change the sound level on the mic i get a really noisy sound (i don't have a mic) so i guess something is working. aplay -l gives this. i'm using the onboard sound and i don't have a soundcard.

**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: HDMI [HDA Intel HDMI], device 3: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: HDMI [HDA Intel HDMI], device 7: HDMI 1 [HDMI 1]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: HDMI [HDA Intel HDMI], device 8: HDMI 2 [HDMI 2]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 0: ALC1150 Analog [ALC1150 Analog]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 1: ALC1150 Digital [ALC1150 Digital]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 2: Generic [HD-Audio Generic], device 3: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 2: Generic [HD-Audio Generic], device 7: HDMI 1 [HDMI 1]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 2: Generic [HD-Audio Generic], device 8: HDMI 2 [HDMI 2]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 2: Generic [HD-Audio Generic], device 9: HDMI 3 [HDMI 3]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 2: Generic [HD-Audio Generic], device 10: HDMI 4 [HDMI 4]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 2: Generic [HD-Audio Generic], device 11: HDMI 5 [HDMI 5]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

the other problem is while using a virtualmachinge. i use qemu for windows7pro 64bit and i use another  one for achlinux for testing. Windows works fine but graphicaly totaly not. it's good enough but it's a bit annoying. i don't know if i need to install the amd windows drivers (i have an amd gpu). i tried it and i can only install the catalyst control center. -smp 8 gives me only 2 cores for the guest which s also weird to me. in arch, i did a normal install with syslinux base base-devel, xorg-server xorg-server-utils xorg-xinit xf86-video-ati/vesa mesa lxdm installed. x doesn't work for some reason. i think i need some guest drivers but i really don't know which one to use. 

EDIT: after rebooting my partition for windowsvm doensn't mount anymore. i commented it out in the fstab and i can boot again but i can't use widows now :(.  I created it with qemu-img create -f raw /dev/sdb3 256G. can someone help me with that?

iTr0_0oW

 

2

The biggest problem people get with ALSA is that it mutes every device by default. In alsamixer find the device you are using and make sure that there is no "MM" underneath the volume bar of the speaker. If there is press 'm' to unmute the channel. Make sure you identify the sound device you're trying to get working.

Furthermore applications will usually output sound to the default audio channel unless told otherwise. The device you are using may not be set to default. This will be "hw:0", yours may be hw:1 or whatever. You can force ALSA to index the devices in a certain way so that your device will be always be  number 0. Please have a look at the Arch wiki for a detailed view on this and other matters: Advanced Linux Sound Architecture

I have no real experience with qemu, sorry. For the guest Arch machine you could try installing xf86-video-vmware and xf86-input-vmmouse as the wiki suggests.

The arch wiki is very useful, you ought to use it more.

 

3

alsa is working :) something was wrong with the cabling....

for the VM part it's not working and i gave up