Intel HDA not working.

Jeffro-Tull · n00b Joined: 24 Nov 2006 Posts: 33

Fresh Gentoo install on my laptop, and I'm having a heck of a time getting sound working in any way. I've got alsa and and the driver compiled as modules and set up to load at boot time (which they do). I ran alsaconf, and it found the module. I set up alsasound to start at boot time (which it does). running alsamixer shows that the module is properly loaded and acknowleged, and that my mixer levels are maxed out.

Running "$ speaker-test" gives no output. Playing an mp3 or movie in mplayer gives no sound. I don't have any system sounds in KDE4. I'm kind of at a loss, since sound was the only thing I never managed to screw up any other time I've installed any operating system on this.

lspci:

DooBeDooBeDo · Apprentice Joined: 21 Aug 2002 Posts: 220 Location: UK

For Intel HDA you're better off with OSS4 - my PC was almost silent with alsa and everything maxed out.

Jeffro-Tull · n00b Joined: 24 Nov 2006 Posts: 33

well, I suppose I could go with OSS, but (and I know I'm being stubborn here) alsa is what I've used since I first got started with Linux, and it has Just Worked with every other distro (and every version) I've tried on this thing since I got it about two years ago. It should work.

Maybe I'll migrate to OSS, but I'd like to figure out why I'm having issues with alsa first.
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Tower: AthlonXP 2800+, Via V82* board, GeForce 6200, openSUSE 11.0
Lappy: Thinkpad T60 2007: Core Duo @ 1.66GHz, Radeon X1300, Gentoo x86, a few ~x86, and x11 overlay.

NathanZachary · Moderator Joined: 30 Jan 2007 Posts: 2605

Are you using kmix? If you are, try looking under the "switches" tab to make sure the appropriate devices are enabled.
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Gankfest · Posted: Mon Aug 18, 2008 2:45 pm Post subject:

IDK I have same problem as you, I have:

00:06.1 Audio device: nVidia Corporation MCP55 High Definition Audio (rev a2)

It uses the intel kernel mod, and I haven't gotten it to work for 4 days now. I'm probably gonna go and use suse until it gets fixed, but obviously their is something wrong with the kernel module or something is wrong because I've never had this problem before. GL tho!
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pappy_mcfae · Posted: Mon Aug 18, 2008 8:16 pm Post subject:

Did you run alsamixer to crank things up, then follow it by alsactl store?

Blessed be!
Pappy
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Gankfest · Posted: Mon Aug 18, 2008 10:18 pm Post subject:

Hey I remember that I actually had this same problem a year ago or so when I went back to Gentoo. I fixed it by using the 2.6.19 kernel(which worked before with hda intel mod) and setting the sound with that, once I got sound working I then updated world to the newer kernel and it worked. Which is what I'm going to do now gl!
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Jeffro-Tull · n00b Joined: 24 Nov 2006 Posts: 33

@ kalos:
Yeah, I'm using Kmix (KDE4 /trunk). When I open the mixer window, it acknowledges my card (Intel HD Audio tab, no others), and the levels are right up where I'd want them. But I don't have sound from command line apps, with or without X running.

@ pappy_mcfae:
I had run alsamixer before, and the card was showing up, yadda yadda yadda. Never ran alsactl store, though. Even still, my levels were always at around 75% - which, from previous experience, should be plenty to hear things. But

@ paradox:
thanks for the input. I hope it doesn't come to that. I'm sick of rolling kernels, to be honest (I'm on number 6, after fighting to get VGA going on the CLI and getting rid of modules that conflicted with the x11 overlay). I'll keep it in mind, but I'm going to go ahead and call that "Plan B" for now.
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Tower: AthlonXP 2800+, Via V82* board, GeForce 6200, openSUSE 11.0
Lappy: Thinkpad T60 2007: Core Duo @ 1.66GHz, Radeon X1300, Gentoo x86, a few ~x86, and x11 overlay.

Jeffro-Tull · n00b Joined: 24 Nov 2006 Posts: 33

uh, hmmm. So, I redid alsamixer to crank the levels up all the way, ran alsactl store to make sure those settings stuck. Still no dice. In a bout of "why not?" I ran /etc/init.d/alsasound restart. And I got this:

pappy_mcfae · Posted: Tue Aug 19, 2008 1:00 am Post subject:

Good assumption. There are two ways to fix the module issue. The easy way is to enter make clean instead of make when you compile the kernel. That will get rid of old object code, and should make a clean kernel.

The harder, but definitely better way is to do the following:
1) copy the .config file out of the main kernel source directory. This must be done, or you will lose your .config
2) enter make mrproper in the source directory in question.
3) copy the .config back into the source directory, and enter make && make modules_install.

The above steps return the kernel source directory to a pristine state; no stale object code, or anything else left but source. Those steps also repopulate the /lib/modules/<your_kernel_version> directory. This should clear out the borked modules.

Blessed be!
Pappy
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Jeffro-Tull · n00b Joined: 24 Nov 2006 Posts: 33

and it all comes back to compiling the kernel... crap.

So, what you're saying is run "make clean" and then run "make && make modules_install" again? I hope so, because that's what I did...

thanks for the tips, I'll let you know how that goes.
_________________
Tower: AthlonXP 2800+, Via V82* board, GeForce 6200, openSUSE 11.0
Lappy: Thinkpad T60 2007: Core Duo @ 1.66GHz, Radeon X1300, Gentoo x86, a few ~x86, and x11 overlay.

Jeffro-Tull · n00b Joined: 24 Nov 2006 Posts: 33

hmmm, well, I guess I've made progress.

tried "make clean" followed by "make && make modules_install" and then "make mrproper" followed by "make && make modules_install", with the same .config file as my previous kernel. Either way, no dice. As far as I can tell, both of the new kernels are functionally identical to what I started with.

On the upside, I got rid of the error messages when I restart alsa!

@ paradox:
What exactly did you do? Did you you unmerge your current gentoo-sources, emerge the package for the older kernel, then re-emerge the newer kernel? I'm willing to try what you did, once I fully understand it.
_________________
Tower: AthlonXP 2800+, Via V82* board, GeForce 6200, openSUSE 11.0
Lappy: Thinkpad T60 2007: Core Duo @ 1.66GHz, Radeon X1300, Gentoo x86, a few ~x86, and x11 overlay.

pappy_mcfae · Posted: Tue Aug 19, 2008 5:28 am Post subject:

Small steps onto a larger road.

If the module errors are gone, and lsmod shows snd_hda_intel, then that's a really big part of the battle. I'd suggest rereading the ALSA guide, just to be sure all is well there. If that doesn't help, it may be a kernel bug. So far, I have been really lucky as far as that goes, or so it would appear from my readings of the forums.

Anyway, rest assured, getting your sound right is doable.

Blessed be!
Pappy
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zyko · Posted: Tue Aug 19, 2008 9:00 am Post subject:

If nothing works, see this: https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-697564-highlight-.html
The short version of that thread: There seems to be a problem in the linux kernel 2.6.25 and 2.6.26. Some people lose their audio after upgrading to those versions. Solution: Try =gentoo-sources-2.6.24-r8. The new 2.6.27 version works for me as well (but that's not stable yet).

Jeffro-Tull · n00b Joined: 24 Nov 2006 Posts: 33

Hmm. I figured on it being something other than a kernel bug. My previously installed OS was openSUSE 11.0, which also uses kernel 2.6.25. Guess they patched that up on their own.

That, and I also tried 2.6.26 on Gentoo. Guess I'll either move backwards or go bleeding edge. Thanks for the heads up.
_________________
Tower: AthlonXP 2800+, Via V82* board, GeForce 6200, openSUSE 11.0
Lappy: Thinkpad T60 2007: Core Duo @ 1.66GHz, Radeon X1300, Gentoo x86, a few ~x86, and x11 overlay.

Gankfest · Posted: Tue Aug 19, 2008 11:55 pm Post subject:

Gankfest · Posted: Wed Aug 20, 2008 12:25 am Post subject:

Jeffro-Tull · n00b Joined: 24 Nov 2006 Posts: 33

well, I just emerged vanilla-sources/2.6.27-rc3 and no dice. Modules being loaded, alsa seeing said modules, alsamixer showing high levels and unmuted channels. Still no sound. *sigh*

Guess I'll start over from scratch (make clean in the source file and go from there) and follow the guide on the wiki before I post again.
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Tower: AthlonXP 2800+, Via V82* board, GeForce 6200, openSUSE 11.0
Lappy: Thinkpad T60 2007: Core Duo @ 1.66GHz, Radeon X1300, Gentoo x86, a few ~x86, and x11 overlay.

Jeffro-Tull · n00b Joined: 24 Nov 2006 Posts: 33

Well, I cleaned out everything having to do with my /usr/src/linux-2.6.27-rc3 directory and started over, following the ALSA guide in the Gentoo handbook. Everything went well, according to console output. Still no sound. I popped in my Kubuntu 8.04.1 live cd (which I used to chroot into my Gentoo install when it was still "under construction", and could have sworn knotify was chiming at me), still no sound. I popped in my openSUSE 11.0 live cd (I had openSUSE 11.0 on this laptop before. Only sound issue was knotify4 crapping out constantly), still no sound.

I'm leaning towards hardware failure.

I'm going to see if I can find (or download) another livecd with an older kernel and try again, but already I've gone from something that should work to something that already did work. I'm beginning to think it's hopeless. Thanks for the help thus far.
_________________
Tower: AthlonXP 2800+, Via V82* board, GeForce 6200, openSUSE 11.0
Lappy: Thinkpad T60 2007: Core Duo @ 1.66GHz, Radeon X1300, Gentoo x86, a few ~x86, and x11 overlay.

pappy_mcfae · Posted: Wed Aug 20, 2008 5:14 am Post subject:

No sound at all? If alsamixer is showing maxed levels, you should have all kinds of sound.

To make sure you have absolutely no sound, find a .wav file on your computer, and type:

Jeffro-Tull · n00b Joined: 24 Nov 2006 Posts: 33

When I said "no sound", I meant that. speaker-test didn't give me anything, mplayer $FILE didn't give me anything, popping open Dragon Player didn't give me anything.... aside from the cooling fan kicking on and the clicking of keys, this laptop was dead silent.

but apparently that doesn't matter any more....

I'm all kinds of confused now. Immediately after I posted that last comment, I shut this thing down for the night. As I was doing so, KDE spat out the logout sound. And I heard it. I started it back up, still saw error messages for the sound card drivers (my old 2.6.25 kernel is still the default in grub.conf), and somehow I'm continuing to have sound. knotify4 is still buggy, but speaker test gives me white noise, both as root on tty1 and as my user in Konsole.mplayer's giving me sound out of files and everything.

I do have a theory. Back in the day, this thing used to be a dual boot with XP. I remember that whatever the volume settings were when I shut down XP, they would stay there until I was back in XP and changed it. If it was muted, it stayed muted. If the volume was low, it stayed low. All my second operating system could do (live or installed) was lower it from or raise it back to what XP left it. Never understood why. I'm guessing that in my fumbling around with live cd's earlier (specifically openSUSE, perhaps), the "lock" on my sound card must have been somehow released.

sorry, I'm sure this sounds like a load of crap. It helps that I'm having trouble describing it exactly, but, like I said, it seems similar to what happened back when this was a Windows/$LINUX_DISTRO dual boot system. I haven't run into anything like this since I decided I wanted 10GB more usable hard drive more than I wanted Windows on this thing. Well, not until now. Windows was last on here 3 or 4 distros ago, and I thought the issues were somehow tied to Windows...
_________________
Tower: AthlonXP 2800+, Via V82* board, GeForce 6200, openSUSE 11.0
Lappy: Thinkpad T60 2007: Core Duo @ 1.66GHz, Radeon X1300, Gentoo x86, a few ~x86, and x11 overlay.

pappy_mcfae · Posted: Wed Aug 20, 2008 6:28 am Post subject:

A good reboot can cure a butt-load of ills. It can also tell you whether or not you ran etc-update properly. I have come to expect the unexpected when it comes to computers.

The cool thing is your sound works, errors and all. The other bugs can be ironed out.

Blessed be!
Pappy
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hikaru2501 · n00b Joined: 13 Aug 2006 Posts: 7

Hi!
I have exactly same problem. Everything seems to work fine, no errors from alsa. I've tried to install it in kernel and as a module. alsaconf has found my card and written "enjoy". I've unmuted output channels and so on.
I don't have any sound - on console or in kde.
I tried even run windows, had sounds in there and run my gentoo again. Didn't help, everything is blocked in some strange way. I thought that maybe it's irq collision or something like that. Maybe I've turned on some kernel options that I don't need and they are blocking sound card... I don't know. Maybe you have some ideas which device can collide with snd card?
Thanx for any help

Here is my configuration and so on:

lspci:

hikaru2501 · n00b Joined: 13 Aug 2006 Posts: 7

hi again, I've found the solution which worked for me.
I disabled alsa in kernel and emerged alsa-driver.
now it works perfectly.

hope that will help someone

Gankfest · Posted: Thu Aug 21, 2008 9:45 pm Post subject:

Got sound using 2.6.24-r8, thx guys

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