Troubleshooting

This page provide general troubleshooting tips. If these cannot help to solve a problem with OSS, you may wish to consult the 4front support forum.

General

Always read your driver's manpage. You can get the name of driver from 'ossinfo'.
Always test with osstest.
When consulting the forum, attach the output of 'ossinfo -v3' and 'ossmix'.

Change mixer settings - ossmix (command line), ossxmix (GUI)
Start and shut down OSS - soundon, soundoff (both require root)
Save and restore mixer settings - savemixer (saving requires write permissions for mixer.save)
Build OSS from source
Other Tips And Tricks

Did OSS load at all?
Does osstest work?
Are the outputs muted in the mixer?
Is the default output (the one linked to /dev/dsp) the one connected / outputting sound in osstest? If not, see here how to change that.
HDAudio: Are the jacks detected by OSS as output, actually the jacks connected to the speaker?
Is this an hardware issue?
- Are the speakers muted?
- Is the soundcard connected correctly to the speakers?
- Do other drivers available for your OS (e.g. ALSA for Linux, FreeBSD native) work?

Many soundcards' hardware requires output mixers be set to less than maximum (60% at times).
Set vmix0-src to an higher setting.
Is the cable from the soundcard to the speakers connected correctly? Could it be too long?
Build and use OSS using the source from public hg repository.

multiple clients to same device node aren't supported on 4front's OSS for FreeBSD. It instead splits the mixing to separate devices: /dev/dsp1, /dev/dsp2, etc. Either set programs to use separate devices, or use a sound server like aRts, esd, etc.
Is vmix loaded?
- If yes, Is vmix attached to the default output device? (Check if 'ossinfo -v3' shows more than one engine for the default output device).
- (Doesn't apply to build 1016:) If vmix is not attached, make sure vmix1_masterdev in vmix.conf is set to the output device's device index (this can be determined via 'ossinfo -a').
is vmix unmuted?