Ubuntu

The volume control did not find any elements and/or devices to control.

Asked by Vic

I recently installed Ubunut 7.04 on a Toshiba notebook. I had some trouble on getting the graphics to work. I already solved that. But I still have a problem with the sound card. The volume icon appears as canceled and when I clicked on it this message appeared:

"The volume control did not find any elements and/or devices to control. This means either that you don't have the right GStreamer plugins installed, or that you don't have a sound card configured."

I'm new to all these so if anyone can give me some clues on where to start I'd be really thankful.

By the way, I ran 'lspci' on the terminal and this is what it's displayed:

00:00.0 Host bridge: ATI Technologies Inc Unknown device 7910
00:01.0 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc Unknown device 7912
00:05.0 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc Unknown device 7915
00:06.0 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc Unknown device 7916
00:07.0 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc Unknown device 7917
00:12.0 SATA controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 Non-Raid-5 SATA
00:13.0 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 USB (OHCI0)
00:13.1 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 USB (OHCI1)
00:13.2 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 USB (OHCI2)
00:13.3 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 USB (OHCI3)
00:13.4 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 USB (OHCI4)
00:13.5 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 USB Controller (EHCI)
00:14.0 SMBus: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 SMBus (rev 14)
00:14.1 IDE interface: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 IDE
00:14.2 Audio device: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 Azalia
00:14.3 ISA bridge: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 PCI to LPC Bridge
00:14.4 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 PCI to PCI Bridge
00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] HyperTransport Technology Configuration
00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Address Map
00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] DRAM Controller
00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Miscellaneous Control
01:05.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Unknown device 791f
0e:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8101E PCI Express Fast Ethernet controller (rev 01)
14:00.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications, Inc. Unknown device 001c (rev 01)
1a:04.0 CardBus bridge: Texas Instruments PCIxx12 Cardbus Controller
1a:04.1 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Texas Instruments PCIxx12 OHCI Compliant IEEE 1394 Host Controller
1a:04.2 Mass storage controller: Texas Instruments 5-in-1 Multimedia Card Reader (SD/MMC/MS/MS PRO/xD)
1a:04.3 Generic system peripheral [0805]: Texas Instruments PCIxx12 SDA Standard Compliant SD Host Controller

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attikon (attikon) said : 		#1

Hello there.

"00:14.2 Audio device: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 Azalia"

Visit the link below, it might be helpful:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux-source-2.6.22/+bug/128085

Have a nice day.

Revision history for this message
Vic (vice-yo) said : 		#2

I'm sorry I didn't really understand the answer. I viewed the link but I could hardly understand what's said there.

I double clicked the sound icon and it appeared a window with title: 'Volume Control: HDA ATI SB (Alsa mixer)'

But the window is empty there are just three menus:

-File: Which has two options; change device and quit. (none of them seem to be helpful)
-Edit: With the option Preferences. This option only displays another window to enable Caller ID and Off-hook.
-And finally Help but other than that, window is completely empty.

Thanks a lot

Revision history for this message
attikon (attikon) said : 		#3

Hello Vic.

Sorry that I wasn't very understandable.
I was trying to say that there is a bug related with this audio card (SB600 Azalia) as you can see on the link above.
Although, the person who spotted it says that it is fixable(?). All he did was to download the alsa-driver-hg20070804 from here,
ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/projects/alsa/snapshot/driver/
It can hardly be considered a solution itself when you have to install again the sound system mechanics but anyway it worked for him, it might work for you.
Take a look at this page too if nothing else can help you:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/DebuggingSoundProblems

I hope this might help you,
have a nice day.

Revision history for this message
Vic (vice-yo) said : 		#4

Hello Ioannis.

First thanks for your help. I'm reading the second link you gave me and started with basic troubleshooting.

I can't check my volume levels because I have no levels at all to check.

So I moved to the second part. "Checking sound device assignment, permissions and resources"

I ran 'cat /proc/asound/cards'

and this is what it displayed:

 0 [SB ]: HDA-Intel - HDA ATI SB
                      HDA ATI SB at 0xf8700000 irq 16

The link says I should check my audio device didn't changed to card1. I don't know if I'm right but I'm guessing the zero at the beginning tells me it didn't.

I also made sure my user has privileges for audio devices and I think it does.

When I go to System > Preferences > Sound and test the different options the window just closes and nothing else happens.

Thanks again, I hope you can give me some more clues to whatever is happening with my sound card

Revision history for this message
Vic (vice-yo) said : 		#5

Hey, I don't really know what happened but I downloaded some updates and after rebooting sounds appeared to be right.

Thanks a lot for the help

Revision history for this message
attikon (attikon) said : 		#6

Hello again Vic.

From what I can assume it seems that your card is really marked as card0. What confuses me a bit is that it uses IRQ 16, as sound cards (are supposed to) use IRQ 5.
I'm afraid that this problem goes beyond my knowledge and you should file a bug report following the guidelines in the wiki page and then submit it through the bugs section, or try to "resurrect" the bug report (link above) with your additional information/problems.

Have a nice day.

Revision history for this message
attikon (attikon) said : 		#7

Oh, sorry for the new reply. I tried to post it at the same time that you wrote your answer. Anyway, good thing that your problem is solved.