Can not hear you...

Working on a microcontrolled audio switcher you can access from the web. Still have to add 32 audio lines. 

Dear #Ubuntu. Some of us use command line only machines. so the loss of alsamixer is a reaL PAIN. Gnome-alsamixer is useless for us. Guess i will have to look for the source and compile it for the system. Or just wait and  replace u12.04 with a real linux.

Recently upgraded the server to U12.04. Would have preferred to replace it with something else, but there are too many web applications to reinstall. The upgrade seemed to go well. Now that have had a chance to use the machine, there apps missing that WERE installed before the upgrade. So now if is a matter of reinstalling some programs.

Like to use the system without a gui. that is everything is done from the command line. That might seem like a pain, but it really is easier. That is especially tru if you have a lot of jobs scripted as we do. Went to fire up some music to play from the server (speakers are attached). All  I got was an error.  Ugh,,,,

First thing to do is to check for the sound card.

$ alsactl init

Got an error of no card. Then tried to run alsamixer. it was no longer installed after the upgrade.

For grins, I tried to get some speech but that failed also.

$ echo I love Rita | festival --tts

Started to install pulseaudio, but thought better of it. Went  over to the server to see if the sound card was still installed.  It looked like it was till I looked closer. Some how the daughterboard that hols the sound card had come loose. Ugh, Shut the machine down and reinstalled the daughterboard. Restarted the system.

$ alsactl init
Found hardware: "CMI8738" "CMedia PCI" "" "0x13f6" "0x0111"
Hardware is initialized using a generic method

That was a good sign. 

Then I tried to play a song or too but mplayer was not installed. Went and reinstalled it. Had it before the upgrade. Now to try again.

$  mplayer Light*

At last sound.....

Then I realized the path command was abbreviated as it did not have my local bin directory included in the path. Time to fix that.

$ echo $PATH
/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games

$ PATH=$PATH:$HOME/bin

$ export PATH

$ echo $PATH

/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games:/home/myhome/bin

Retested the voice synthesis and now the computer talks again. Great for use to let you know issues for good things about the system,

$ echo I love Rita | festival --tts

Reintalled Freebasic and compiled some programs that control led's on the parallel port. updated a few html pages to reflect the use of the programs.

Time to go watch some football.