Realtek ALC880 not recognised any more by alsa

[corrosif]

Hi,

Back when using Gentoo with kernel 2.6.32 and baselayout-1, the soundcard in my laptop (an Amilo M3438G 75001) was recognized and working perfectly.

Now, I'm trying to make it work with kernel linux-2.6.37-gentoo-r4 and baselayout-2 (not sure if baselayout has anything to do with the problem, but well...). But alsaconf cannot find it!

Here is the output of lspci:

[corrosif]

Strange... rebooted my laptop today, and sound is now working!

More strange, if I launch alsaconf, my soundcard is still not detected... although it works!
_________________
S'il n'y a pas de solution, alors il n'y a pas de problème (logique Shadok).

[dmpogo]

You have both OSS and ALSA stacks defined in the kernel and compiled as modules. Could it be that they conflict if loaded both, or OSS was loaded in the first try ?

[corrosif]

I noticed another funny thing: sound is working, although alsasound deamon is stopped:

[dmpogo]

[corrosif]

Sigh... After many other test reboots, the fact is that sometimes I have sound (during the whole uptime), sometimes not...

And it is hard to find where the problem lies, as my soundcard is not detected by alsaconf anymore (which is a thing I can't understand, as it worked well on prior installations with older software versions), and the other dumps I mentionned stay the same.

... or am I missing something?
_________________
S'il n'y a pas de solution, alors il n'y a pas de problème (logique Shadok).

[krinn]

i would bet on a bad made kernel with too few irq avaiable.
so boot -> irq for the card -> working
irq shared with some device -> card not working.
check your apic choices you've made in your new kernel or cat /proc/interrupt should gave you a good fast hint

[corrosif]

Here is my interrupts state when the card is not working (I outlined the interresting part about the soundcard, which is refered by hda_intel):

[krinn]

if you can enable (it's arch dependent) enable MSI interrupt to get more irq and a better handling.
else battle with your bios or remove some unused devices (the ide0 and ide1 should belong to old crappy ide driver, where you should only have one taken by ahci)

options you might check that could help you:
CONFIG_ARCH_SUPPORTS_MSI=y : you can't set this one yourself, but will answer if you can use it or not
CONFIG_PCI_MSI=y
and INTR_REMAP

with that you will get real more irq (and will be less bug by irq sharing hell)

[corrosif]

I have activated following options in my kernel config, as you suggested:

[krinn]

well, it's not bad anyway to get more irq :p

just try your previous kernel: if card is detect and works 100% time : then easy, your new kernel have an option the card doesn't really like.

[dmpogo]

Actually, nvidia chips can also probably use MSI interrups. Try adding

options nvidia NVreg_EnableMSI=1

to your /etc/modprobe.d/nvidia.conf


regrading sound, what does aplay -l ( and then aplay -L ) show ?

[corrosif]

With your nvidia NVreg_EnableMSI=1 option, things are even nicer now

[dmpogo]

OK, so your sound card is known to the system (I often do not trust alsaconf).

what does 'amixer' show ?

you can also run alsamixer and see graphically whether it sees a card and whether any channels are muted (this is a frequent issue, and I suspect is the case here)

[corrosif]

I checked alsamixer when sound is not working... my card is shown, and the interesting channels are not muted:

[dmpogo]

Ok, they look fine. Do you have any .wav file ? Find one and try

aplay file.wav

would you hear anything ?


BTW, what version of alsa-utils do you have ?

[corrosif]

No, I can't hear anything through aplay, nor with any other application.

Here are the sound-related packages I have installed:

[corrosif]

After recompiling everything (kernel included) without the variable ALSA_CARDS, nothing has changed.
Still no sound and no card recognition within alsaconf...
_________________
S'il n'y a pas de solution, alors il n'y a pas de problème (logique Shadok).

[dmpogo]

What if you plug in headphones ?

[corrosif]

Sound is working through the headphones!
Does that mean that the main speakers are muted in an invisible way?
_________________
S'il n'y a pas de solution, alors il n'y a pas de problème (logique Shadok).

[duryodhana]

[dmpogo]

[corrosif]

I tried activating all other sound drivers, as duryodhana suggested... but results are the same.
It's not surprising though, as I am sure that my driver is the realtek one.

When muting headphones in the mixer, music is not played anywhere (headphones & main speakers).
I have tried almost all combinations of muting/unmuting for all available channels... music is never played through the main speakers.
_________________
S'il n'y a pas de solution, alors il n'y a pas de problème (logique Shadok).

[dmpogo]

[corrosif]

My previous analysis was wrong... the fact is that the result is always the same, at each boot.
Simply, I moved my computer from place to place during the first tests, sometimes with external speakers (connected to the headphones), sometimes without.
I did not notice that when it was not working, it was always when using the internal speakers without headphones

On my laptop, there is no physical hardware for surround control (there are only two native speakers, and a stereo headphone output).

I kept the sources of my old kernel (2.6.32-gentoo-r7)... I could try to compile it again to see if detection still works OK on that old kernel.
_________________
S'il n'y a pas de solution, alors il n'y a pas de problème (logique Shadok).