Wired problemes with alsa under Dapper

[Nils Brünggel]

Hi all,

I played a bit with an USB headset and skype. Unfortunately I could
not get it working. Much worse is that I cannot get esd working as a
user anymore. Also alsamixer stopped working when I try to execute it
as user, but it works as root. My user is a member of the group audio
and I could not figure out where the problem is.


< nils at nx7010:~ [1] > alsamixer

alsamixer: function snd_ctl_open failed for default: No such device
< nils at nx7010:~ [1] > esd
ALSA lib confmisc.c:672:(snd_func_card_driver) cannot find card 'default'
ALSA lib conf.c:3493:(_snd_config_evaluate) function
snd_func_card_driver returned error: No such device
ALSA lib confmisc.c:392:(snd_func_concat) error evaluating strings
ALSA lib conf.c:3493:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_concat
returned error: No such device
ALSA lib confmisc.c:1072:(snd_func_refer) error evaluating name
ALSA lib conf.c:3493:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_refer
returned error: No such device
ALSA lib conf.c:3962:(snd_config_expand) Evaluate error: No such device
ALSA lib pcm.c:2102:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM default


So my questions:

Is there a HOWTO somewhere which explains how to get a USB headset
working on ubuntu with skype? If not there should be one.. and usb
headsets should also work with an enterprise quality linux
distribution.

Ubuntu removed alsaconf, but what can I use to configure alsa now?

What does ubuntu do when I choose another soundcard as default in the
gnome sound preferences?

Regards

Nils