[CentOS] Trouble running 'alsamixer' as normal user on headless box with minimal system

Niki Kovacs

contact at kikinovak.net
Mon Jul 6 13:24:41 UTC 2009


Hi,

I just transformed an old Pentium III 500 into a headless jukebox. It's 
installed in the basement, near the stereo. There's only a base CentOS 
system on it (GNOME unchecked, package customization checked and then 
everything unchecked). From there on, I just installed the ALSA utils, 
and vorbis-tools. The machine is only supposed to do one thing (and to 
do it well, UNIX philosophy :oD): fetch an audio stream (produced by 
MPD/Icecast upstairs on a big PC) and then output it from the soundcard 
to the AUX IN from the stereo.

I have a partial - and near-total - success, in that everything runs 
fine... as root user. Whenever I try to run alsamixer as a normal user 
on that box, I get the following error message:

[kikinovak at jukebox ~]$ alsamixer

alsamixer: function snd_ctl_open failed for default: No such file or 
directory

Something similar happens with ogg123, which runs fine as root, but 
produces the following error message as plain user:

[kikinovak at jukebox ~]$ ogg123 http://babasse:8000/jukebox.ogg
ALSA lib confmisc.c:768:(parse_card) cannot find card '0'
ALSA lib conf.c:3513:(_snd_config_evaluate) function 
snd_func_card_driver returned error: Aucun fichier ou répertoire de ce type
ALSA lib confmisc.c:392:(snd_func_concat) error evaluating strings
ALSA lib conf.c:3513:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_concat 
returned error: Aucun fichier ou répertoire de ce type
ALSA lib confmisc.c:1251:(snd_func_refer) error evaluating name
ALSA lib conf.c:3513:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_refer 
returned error: Aucun fichier ou répertoire de ce type
ALSA lib conf.c:3985:(snd_config_expand) Evaluate error: Aucun fichier 
ou répertoire de ce type
ALSA lib pcm.c:2184:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM default
=== Impossible de charger le pilote par défaut, et aucun autre pilote 
n'est indiqué dans le fichier de configuration. Terminaison.


Now I guess there must be something missing, because on my other 
machines (with a full-blown desktop installed), alsamixer runs fine as 
normal user.

Any idea what could be wrong here?

Cheers from the hot south of France,

Niki



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