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I am trying to get my Linux installation to play musix. I have debian linux. The contents of /etc/debian_version are: 6.0.2 I cannot seem to get any sound to play from my speakers and after looking through forum postings, I have hit a brick wall. lspci | grep Audio gives the following:

02:00.0 PCI bridge: Creative Labs [SB X-Fi Xtreme Audio] CA0110-IBG PCI to PCIe Bridge
03:00.0 Audio device: Creative Labs [SB X-Fi Xtreme Audio] CA0110-IBG
0a:00.1 Audio device: ATI Technologies Inc Cypress HDMI Audio [Radeon HD 5800 Series]

When I attempt to run the speaker-test command I the following error:

Playback open error: -16,Device or resource busy

So I look for the process which might be blocking the soundcard: lsof | grep snd (command taken from some forum). Once the process has been killed, I get the following error: 

Write error: -5,Input/output error
xrun_recovery failed: -5,Input/output error
Transfer failed: Operation not permitted

I dont know what else to do. Can anyone guide me in the correct direction? Much appreciated

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Note, the process that I kill probably should not be killed. – bogertron Sep 7 '11 at 0:02
post the output of lsmod | grep snd and lsof | grep snd – Torian Sep 7 '11 at 2:15

1 Answer

up vote 1 down vote

Post the output of:
1. lsmod | grep snd
2. cat /proc/asound/cards
3. aplay -L
4. try to play sound like this aplay -D hw:0,0 /usr/share/sounds/alsa/Front_Center.wav
5. groups | grep audio

BTW, there is a good description of alsa here

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