[Solved] Sound card settings for root user

[Member dirkd]

How can I set the correct sound card for the root user?

I’m looking for a terminal command, or a configuration file to edit, since slimski makes it impossible to login as root. My computer reports two sound devices: ‘HDA nVidia’ (which is the default, but doesn’t work) and ‘HD-audio generic’ (which I have to choose in stead). When using a root window of zzzFM, I can’t listen to an mp3, and every video I start is silent.

• This topic was modified 1 year, 4 months ago by dirkd.
• This topic was modified 1 year, 4 months ago by dirkd.

[Forum Admin rokytnji]

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Wondering if opening alsamixer as root and set the default sound card with F key listed for it might be a option. Never tried running things as root so can’t say. Might be a zzzfm issue. I don’t run that either. Something for zzfm might be in the hidden ~/.config folder in /home/your user name.

?

man zzzfm

locate zzzfm

• This reply was modified 1 year, 4 months ago by rokytnji.
• This reply was modified 1 year, 4 months ago by rokytnji.
• This reply was modified 1 year, 4 months ago by rokytnji.

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[Member dirkd]

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I did try the alsamixer, it lets me change the soundcard (or it pretends to – I never actually heard anything), but the moment I close the mixer I find (after re-opening it) that nothing has changed and HDA nVidia is still selected as output device.

I really don’t think it has anything to do with zzzFM. Switching sound device would probably suffice for what I want.

I have been looking at the folder /proc/asound/. There are some links there called NVidia and Generic. If I could switch their targets, I guess I would be OK. But for some reason I can’t even rename the existing links, although the permissions seem to tell me I can. But then the permissions on the parent folders /proc/ and /proc/asound/ itself deny writing, and I’m afraid to mess things up further when changing the permissions on these folders.

[EDIT – Solved] I found out about the file ~/.asoundrc and I noticed that this file was absent in /root/. So I made a copy from my normal users .asoundrc to the /root/ folder and then the sound was working for the root user too.

It would be nice if I understood why the nVidia device isn’t working properly, but since the other device works, I’m not very motivated anymore to pursue the question.

• This reply was modified 1 year, 4 months ago by dirkd.
• This reply was modified 1 year, 4 months ago by dirkd.

[Member blur13]

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Why would you want to watch videos as root?

[Member dirkd]

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No offense, you know, but if you mean this as a rebuke, that’s a useless question. Each use case is different, and all kinds of things that you never thought of are needed by all kinds of different users. But if you are really curious: I have three different OS’s installed on my physical computer. There’s a Win10 installation, an Antix17 and an Antix21 OS. When logged in the Antix21, the Antix17 and Win10 partitions are inaccessible, except for root, as a safety measure. And of course the other way around. Nevertheless, I sometimes feel the need to inspect the disk of another OS, without taking the trouble to reboot. It annoys me then that the sound is not working. It’s not that much of a problem, but I am used to everything just working as it should. It always did before, so it should do so now.

[Member blur13]

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I was genuinely curios as I could not imagine the use case.

I did the following (credit to Xecure):

If you edit /etc/udevil/udevil.conf, search for # allowed_internal_devices, un-comment it and leave it looking like this:
allowed_internal_devices = *
This will let you mount all internal devices as your usual user without the need of root.

Of course, you mentioned security issues, and your way is more secure if you have multiple users of your computer. I’m the only user of my computer so being able to access all partitions as “user” is convenient. I think other distros have this enabled by default, so I was used to that.

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