Today I upgraded my system from Fedora 7 to Fedora 8. The installation process went very smoothly. But once the installation was done, I started the long process of configuring it. That’s when I ran into the sound issue in Fedora 8 – and based on the forum posts, so did many others.
Basically, you get this error at KDE startup…
Sound Error Informational Message: Error while initializing the sound driver: device: default can't be opened for playback (Permission denied) The sound server will continue, using the null output device
You will not be able to play any sound – amarok will crash if you try to play anything. But if you run system-config-soundcard(or System -> Administration -> Soundcard Detection), you will be able to hear the test sound. That is because you are running it as root.
Solution 1 – Console-Kit Service
Did you turn of Console-Kit and avahi-daemon startup services using system-config-services? If so, go back and re-enable them.
- Run system-config-services(or System -> Administration -> Services)
- Find Console-Kit and enable it
- Find avahi-daemon, enable it
- Restart the system and see if that fixed the problem.
This worked for me – so I did not try any of the following solutions.
Solution 2 – alsa-plugin
If the first solution did not solve the problem, try removing the pulseaudio plugin for alsa by running this command.
yum remove alsa-plugins-pulseaudio
Solution 3 – Permissions
If neither of the above work, open /etc/security/console.perms.d/50-default-perms and add this line to the top…
<sound>=/dev/dsp* /dev/snd/*
And at the end, add this line…
<console> 0666 <sound> 0600 root
Related Links
Hopefully, your problems are solved by now. If not, here are some links to help you further…
- Bugzilla Bug 292201: ALSA mixer only usable as root
- Fixing Broken Sound in Fedora
- Fedora 8 & pulse audio – nonroot users have no sound Thread
- Pulse Audio Potential Issues
More about Fedora 8 in the next post.
Man thank you for the article. It save me 🙂
The 3rd solution worked for me. finally! Thank you.
PS. This issue is not only related to Fedora 8. I had the same problem in FC7. I guess there must be some inconsistence (bug?) in applying SELInux security level (from enabled to disabled, in my case).
Thanks for this article.
Two points:
1) I had to do the 3rd tweak (permissions fix)
2) avahi-daemon isn’t necessary since I’m having good luck without it.
On a more general note, I’ve noticed I have less problems if I use init 5 instead of init 3. Something about GDM connecting to ConsoleKit. Desktop Linux has gotten very strange in recent months..
Well, after giving up on Linux in the 90s I gave it a good try again. I literally spent the past 2-3 weeks troubleshooting the sound issue. I did all the steps above. Result: now even the root user doesn’t have sound. Whatever I try, it makes things worse.
My verdict: this is 2008. If it takes this much trouble to try to get SOUND WORKING on a PC, then f%^(*_ off and take your substandard piece of garbage with you. This is by far the worse OS I have ever tried. It’s so bad, it’s not worth my time. Enough….
thanks a million.. was a very frustrating problem especially since im new to linux..the second solution worked for me ..
I install VLC in my fedora8,but i don’t know how to start it .can you help me?
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frustrated wrote:
Well, after giving up on Linux in the 90s I gave it a good try again. I literally spent the past 2-3 weeks troubleshooting the sound issue.
My verdict: this is 2008. If it takes this much trouble to try to get SOUND WORKING on a PC, then f%^(*_ off and take your substandard piece of
———–
You seem to be a windows or mac os kiddie. Go back and play with your toys. Linux is not for you. If you want a multimedia box in which you can play movies only try windows vista (shitiest os). If you want plain simple distros…pay some money and get urself RHEL, fedora is a bad choice. Linux is and always will be a g33ks box, not a kiddies tool.
@Animesh
Please don’t feed the trolls. Ignoring them is the best course of action.
I just a new learner.my job is about embedded Linux.
dude you saved days of my life. if only I’d have found your site sooner.
i had no sound even for the root user for 3 months. Finally i updated the hald n then reboot.
Now i’m happy with F8
Thanks
Well, it is frustrating. If you’ve had Fedora say FC4 up to Fedora 8 working just fine with sound, then why the step back?
It gets me frustrated too. I’m a professional software engineer. I have a feeling, due to the internet, that the majority, but most certainly not all of Linux writers are script kiddies, and not professional software engineers.
If this was a closed source product, this kind of sound f up would result in someone being fired. And, if Animesh had that much trouble spelling, he wouldn’t even come close to working in a professional software or hardware organization.
@Franklin
The sound problem in Fedora is an edge case – it only happens if you have a specific configuration. And there are edge cases everywhere – from small 1 man project to large “professional” softwares.
Thanks! Third fix worked for me.
Not sure I agree with the last comment. This specific configuration seems to be pretty common, judging by the number of hits.
Thanks! Third fix worked for me !!
Franklin Says:
June 28th, 2008 at 7:18 am
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If this was a closed source product, this kind of sound f up would result in someone being fired. And, if Animesh had that much trouble spelling, he wouldn’t even come close to working in a professional software or hardware organization.
————–
For your information, I don’t work in a software company. I work in financial field as an analyst in an investment bank Lehman Brothers. I do open source as a hobby. If you think every professional software organization uses Windows you are mistaken. What the heck is windows server 2008 core, it’s a big joke with not even .NET support. And software companies don’t install software on the basis of sound issues. Windows has better sound, lets install this rather than linux–it will do wonders for my web server. Linux is rock solid as a server system and maybe the numbers will tell you how much linux penetrates the server market. People shy enough from reporting that they are using Linux coz they don’t wanna get caught in the wierd free software loop. I don’t believe in charity or think that open source is about charity. The process of open source brings out the best in software and I dont compromise on quality. Windows has been the worst OS, and I dont care if most people use it. even if 70% use it, maybe 70% are idiots. It’s not about windows or linux or any other system. I want a crash resistant system which is easy to use and believe me all that talk about user friendliness _windows is not user friendly_ or crash resistant. If i want to listen to music i would rather buy a music player than listen to music on windows. For playing games i would rather have an XBox than deal with garbage like Windows.
Thanks man, first solution worked for me.
thanks again for ur help
number 3 worked for me – thanks. Was starting to pull my hair out until I read this.
Linux does seem to be plagued with this type of thing. If it had the same kind of funding that Windows does it would be better.
THANKS DUDE Ur solution3 works in my PC 🙂
Animesh Says:
i would rather have an XBox than deal with garbage like Windows.
–xbox is a Microsoft product–
Doesn’t matter. I never said I hate all Microsoft products. I just don’t think it’s useful enough for me. So even if I get a free copy of Windows and if it’s not useful why should I use it.
I wouldn’t mind paying for X-Box, if I were into gaming, coz it’s a good product (as far as I know). I don’t hate microsoft, I am just passionate about Linux and the good software I get along with it..(it doesn’t mean, since it’s free I love it). I almost dont get anything with a single copy of Windows. Plus it crashes all the time.
Liking something just coz u want to hate something else is never a good thing. It’s about making ur choices and well if 90% people like windows they may have better reasons for liking it…..it doesn’t matter 😉
I have recently upgraded from F5 to F8. I had success in solving my sound problem and want to share my experience. I went directly to solution 3 above without removing alsa-plugins-audio ( solution 2 ). Solution 1 was not pertinate in my case. The console kit and avahi-daemon were already enabled.
errata.. alsa-plugins-audio should have read as alsa-plugins-pulseaudio. my appologies.
I’ve tried 3 steps above but not successful so far. I have Fedora 10 on Dell D830 laptop. Have anyone had any success on Fedora 10?
I was facing this problem, Solution #2 worked for me, thanks for sharing.
Hi everyone!
I just installed Fedora 8 on my PC and still I can not hear any sound on my system even when the record input / output. My sound card is Intel ICH6.
Please help me solve this problem. Actually, I’ve been using Mandriva and Ubuntu, but some friends told me that Fedora is very stable and useful, so I decided to have some changes! But this problem prevents me discover Fedora. Please help me, thank you very much!
Best Regards!
I think you should install latest Fedora release – 14. Fedora 8 is not supported any more from the community.
Regards!
Friend is running Fedora 8 and this helped me help her out lol, but yea for some reason she hasn’t and does not want to upgrade to 14.
Oh well
-Dave from San Antonio
I had some similar problems since my last round of updates….
In the Fedora Control Center/Sound & Multimedia/Sound System/Hardware tab
change the selected audio device to Open Sound System or Threaded Open Sound System.
Those both are working, at the moment, for me. ALSA worked for a while, then stopped
for no apparent reason….
There is another issue with sound in Fedora 8, but this appears to be related to the new PulseAudio sound method. When you launch KDE, sometimes a message will popup with the error message: “Error while initializing the sound driver: gizmo: default cannot be opened for playback (Permission denied) The sound server will continue, using the null output device”. If this is the case, open up a terminal & enter the following commands to get your sound back again: