Obtain ALSA Sound Card Information

You can type commands at the command prompt on a Linux host system to obtain information about the ALSA sound card and determine whether the current user has the appropriate permissions to access it.

Prerequisites

Obtain the documentation for the alsamixer program. The documentation is available on the Internet.

Procedure

• Use the alsamixer program to determine whether the current user has the appropriate permissions to access the ALSA sound card.

  If the user does not have the appropriate permissions, an error similar to alsamixer: function snd_ctl_open failed for default: No such device. appears.

• If a user does not have the appropriate permissions to access the ALSA sound card, give the user read, write, and execute permissions to the directory that contains the ALSA sound card.

  The ALSA sound card is usually located in /dev/snd/. This location can vary depending on the Linux distribution.

• To list the name and type of sound chipset on the host system, type the command lspci | grep -I audio.
• To list the sound cards on the host system, type the command cat /proc/asound/cards.
• If the ALSA sound card is muted, use the alsamixer program to unmute it.