SBLinux.org

Well, I decided to try ArchLinux (again) and have come to the same place I was last time with the same problem: I cannot play / access / read, etc., music CDs. Data CDs are no problem but audio CDs will not play. I am using fluxbox in ArchLinux 2008.06 with Xmms as the audio player. I have read, reread, and read again the Wiki / Guides and, for the life of me, cannot figure this one out. If you have any ideas / suggestions I would greatly appreciate hearing them. Thanks Folks.

Hi, morux.

A few questions:
1] Can you play a music file, like an mp3, wav, etc?
2] Did you configure your Xmms in any way, or is it fresh from install?
3] In any other OS can you play Audio CDs on that machine? [I want to eliminate a possible HW cause with this question.]
4] Does the Xmms player not know how to find the CD-ROM drive, or does Xmms find it but can't load the CD into a play mode? Or does it seem to be playing, but no sounds issue forth?
5] Can you rip the CD to hard disk, and play from the HDD?

I haven't been using Arch lately. I had it set up with KDE. . . and then they went and changed all the KDE packages over to KDE 4.1.

Bleeding edge. . . which doesn't include Quanta+ for web dev. I have to have Quanta +!

But maybe now you will inspire me to install Fluxbox and play with my ArchLinux again. I've been so busy dealing with this mepiscommunity.org project that I've been neglecting my distrojunkie duties!

SilverBear wrote:Hi, morux.

A few questions:
1] Can you play a music file, like an mp3, wav, etc?
2] Did you configure your Xmms in any way, or is it fresh from install?
3] In any other OS can you play Audio CDs on that machine? [I want to eliminate a possible HW cause with this question.]
4] Does the Xmms player not know how to find the CD-ROM drive, or does Xmms find it but can't load the CD into a play mode? Or does it seem to be playing, but no sounds issue forth?
5] Can you rip the CD to hard disk, and play from the HDD?

I haven't been using Arch lately. I had it set up with KDE. . . and then they went and changed all the KDE packages over to KDE 4.1.

Bleeding edge. . . which doesn't include Quanta+ for web dev. I have to have Quanta +!

But maybe now you will inspire me to install Fluxbox and play with my ArchLinux again. I've been so busy dealing with this mepiscommunity.org project that I've been neglecting my distrojunkie duties!

Thanks SB for the reply.
Answers to your questions:
#1 Yes
#2 No...It is a fresh install
#3 Yes.....I had Sidux KDE lite on this machine until yesterday when (who knows for what reason) I decided to give Arch another go. Audio CDs played well with Sidux and with Antix which was on this machine before that.
#4 Xmms will locate either cdrom (1 or 2) but will show no files / tracts, etc.
#5 No (see #4)

Yes, I have noticed your involvement in the ongoing Mepis saga----you're a busy man. Things seem to be coming around with Mepis, though, thanks to you and others in the community.

Fluxbox has been my favorite w/m for some time now. I was just getting into it when Antix 6.5 was released. My laptop sports Antix 7.5 with, of course, fluxbox. Anti has done and continues to do an excellent job.

This particular machine is old.......Packard Bell 400 MHz Celeron with 256 MB RAM. It ran Sidux Lite fairly well, even with KDE (yes, I know, hard to believe). For the most part, however, I ran fluxbox but, having KDE installed, was able to access kde apps as I needed them. Very nice.

Well, enough rambling on. Thanks for your interest and good luck in all your many
endeavors.

Oh well, that'll teach me not to look at the forums before writing a PM instead!

From SilverBear's queries and morux's replies above, I wonder:
- Are you 100% sure you have the right audio CD playing plugin for Xmms - it's a while since I used it, but IIRC it needs a plugin which the default package may not contain.
- Have you tried another player such as Audacious, etc?
- How did you try to rip the audio CD - K3b, ripperX or whatever?

I can't believe this is a particularly difficult or unsurmountable problem.

By the way, SilverBear, Quanta+ is packaged separately in the Arch AUR, see: http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=18707
I've said "stuff KDE 4" and gone to Gnome!

@morux,

Did you post this: http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=54518 ?
oe even: http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=43790 ?

If so, have you removed (commented out) these lines from /etc/fstab? :

Code: Select all

/dev/cdrom /media/cdrom   auto    ro,user,noauto,unhide   0      0
/dev/cdrom1 /media/cdrom1   auto    ro,user,noauto,unhide   0      0

Farcry wrote:@morux,

Did you post this: http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=54518 ?
oe even: http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=43790 ?

If so, have you removed (commented out) these lines from /etc/fstab? :

Code: Select all

/dev/cdrom /media/cdrom   auto    ro,user,noauto,unhide   0      0
/dev/cdrom1 /media/cdrom1   auto    ro,user,noauto,unhide   0      0

Farcry,
Yes, on both counts. Also, I can rip tracts (mp3) from cd using grip then play them via xmms. I have the "xmms-plugins" package installed, as well, but the problem persists. There's an answer somewhere. Thanks for your continued effort.

Update
Just installed Audacious---same results as with Xmms

Thanks to Farcry for keeping this thread rolling!

BTW, you may notice that on the forum there is now "Karma points" that you can click when someone has been particularly helpful. I'm clicking Farcry for pitching in while I'm distracted by the mepiscommunity.org project.

In addition to upgrading the forum tomorrow to version 3 of the phpBB software, I plan on spending a little time installing fluxbox on my Arch. Maybe then instead of guessing I can get in there and try to figure this problem out --if the two of you don't solve it by then!

Latest thoughts:

- Could it be that your players are trying to access information about the audio CD over the internet (CDDB etc) and not finding it and maybe waiting on a timeout?
- Are the players (or their plugins) configured to extract digital sound from the CD, not analogue?
- Are you sure that the volume control in your mixer for CD output is activated?
- Have you tried OSS (eg) rather than ALSA?

Re: Alsamixer settings.......checked, checked, and rechecked.
I had not thought about CDDB and I'm not familiar with OSS but I'll give it a shot.....thanks for the suggestions. I will be slow in responding for the next couple of days....got to pay those bills....but I'll check it all out as soon as I can and post back. Thanks guys.

Okay SB & Farcry, you'll want to shoot me for this but the problem (as both of you alluded to) was
an improperly configured input CD plugin. The default configuration had my cdrom under /mnt rather than /media.
I made the change and everything works fine. I have used xmms on Linux in the past but never had to do that so
I did not know how. I finally found this: http://linux.omnipotent.net/article.php ... e_id=11366 and it dawned
on me what you two had suggested. Duh

Thanks for your help and I beg your indulgence. This will teach me to do better research in the future before
I make an idiot of myself on the forums. Thank you.

Morux,
Don't apologise!

Time and time again, it's the "little" things that trip most of us up. And if there weren't a record of them on forums, those things wouldn't seem "obvious" --and there would be no records to research!

I'm just glad you got it fixed!

SB

@morux,

Hey, hey, no regrets or apologies needed - the main thing is: you got it working! (and found a decent article which explained things better). In fact, this kind of /dev versus /media etc confusion has caught me out a few times in the past myself. Just as SilverBear says, we need these kinds of queries on record so others can find them.

Enjoy your sounds!

Thanks again guys, I really do appreciate your help and patience. Another first for me: having to manually start CUPS & editing rc.conf to have it run at startup. I have sound, can play Cds, and I can use all my network printers now so I'm good to go.

Well, time to end this thread, I guess. Thanks again. I would sign off as "moron" but some guy over in mepislovers already has that handle (seems like a nice guy). In the words of General Douglas MacArthur, "I shall return."