[SOLVED] Lost sound and kernel not working - Cauldron

[murali]

I installed v1.0 with the intention of changing to Cauldron. After quite a bit of stumbling steps (didn't work as per wiki, kept giving package list not found), finally got Cauldron url working from urpmi/package manager. After couple of hours upgrade and post reboot, sound stopped working (in flash as well as in system).

I've snd_hda_intel in my machine and i did basic troubleshooting from the forums on this issue but still have it disabled. I uninstalled pulse and reinstalled again and even after few reboots, sound is still off. Any idea what else i can check or do to make sure sound module is enabled during startup. Currently kmix gives dummy output while with pavucontrol, i can't even increase/decrease sound level, the option slider is grayed out.

Also kernel 3.3 rc7 was installed during upgrade but it didn't create it's own initrd, just created a dummy symlink, instead it seemed to have merged settings on to existing 2.38 initrd. Luckily everything (except sound) was still working after upgrade. Is there any way i can recreate initrd for 3.3 and not rely on 2.38, which i would probably remove if 3.3 works fine and is relatively stable.

Thanks in advance for any help/suggestions for fixing this.

[jaywalker]

Hi murali,
some snd-hda-intel users suffered from the benefits of some codec development work carried out by the Alsa kernel people. It seems that a lot of work has been done to improve auto-detection of device capabilities. This first became apparent with the drivers shipping with the version 3 kernel. Your kernel 2.38 Alsa drivers are quite different for some codecs.

It would be a great help if you could post the output from executing

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cat /sys/class/sound/hwC0D0/vendor_name
cat /sys/class/sound/hwC0D0/chip_name

That will show something like "Realtek" and "ALC662 rev1" if you have my sound card!

Also, if you have any snd-hda-intel module options in /etc/modprobe.conf or in /etc/modprobe.d/ they could be very interesting. I gather that the sound did work fine in MGA1, yes?

Richard

[murali]

Hi Richard,

i don't have anything under /sys, it's completely empty, is that normal? or maybe it's empty because the sound doesn't work, just taking a guess here.

In modprobe.conf, i see -

alias sound-slot-0 snd_hda_intel
options snd-ac97-codec power_save=1

from /etc/modprobe.d via symlink i found following line in snd-oss.conf under /etc/sound/profiles/alsa

install snd /sbin/modprobe --first-time --ignore-install --all snd snd_pcm_oss snd_seq_oss snd_mixer_oss

Yes, sound was working in MGA1.

Please let me know if you need any more information. Thanks for your help.

Yes, sound did work in MGA1, just stopped working after upgrade.

[jaywalker]

First impressions while I wait for the coffee to brew; snd_hda_intel and snd_ac97_codec are for different soundcards. Does this mean you have two? High Definition Audio is the successor to AC97.

My first guess is you have nothing in /sys/class/sound because you have no configured sound system. Let's look at the output from

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lsmod | grep snd

which you will need to run in a console as root.

Need coffee. More in a moment...

[jaywalker]

i don't have anything under /sys, it's completely empty, is that normal? or maybe it's empty because the sound doesn't work, just taking a guess here.

No it is decidedly not normal. /sys should be absolutely choc-full of all sorts of interesting stuff, or your system isn't running:-)

In modprobe.conf, i see -

alias sound-slot-0 snd_hda_intel
options snd-ac97-codec power_save=1

This looks like you have some leftovers from a previous life. You said you have installed MGA1 then "upgraded" to Cauldron. That often explains some kinds of confusion in the configuration files department, but you seem to have traces of old hardware too. Unless, of course, you really do have two soundcards, but then why is there no sound-slot-1 line. No, on balance I reckon the snd-ac97-codec line is a hangover from a previous existence. I have just noticed I have the same entry on a machine where the motherboard has an ac97 "card" but it is disabled in the BIOS now because I only use an external pci Soundblaster.

from /etc/modprobe.d via symlink i found following line in snd-oss.conf under /etc/sound/profiles/alsa

install snd /sbin/modprobe --first-time --ignore-install --all snd snd_pcm_oss snd_seq_oss snd_mixer_oss

That all looks normal enough. I think the priority is to nail down once and for all what sound hardware MGA1 found and set up correctly. Viewing the loaded modules with the "lsmod" command will tell us part of the story. For the rest we need to see what hardware is detected on your box. So let us see what you get when you execute:

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lspcidrake --verbose

With those two bits of information we will know which modules you need and which ones are being loaded.

[doktor5000]

In modprobe.conf, i see -

alias sound-slot-0 snd_hda_intel
options snd-ac97-codec power_save=1

This looks like you have some leftovers from a previous life. You said you have installed MGA1 then "upgraded" to Cauldron. That often explains some kinds of confusion in the configuration files department, but you seem to have traces of old hardware too. Unless, of course, you really do have two soundcards, but then why is there no sound-slot-1 line. No, on balance I reckon the snd-ac97-codec line is a hangover from a previous existence.

Nope, the second one is a default entry, which you also get if you don't have that, it's just to enable power saving in case you'd have it, as it's a pretty common implementation in older systems. Otherwise the first entry looks pretty normal.
Either the upgrade is not complete (BTW which mirror is used?) or there's something missing about kernel upgrade, /sys should be always populated, otherwise you don't even need to troubleshoot this sound issue, as it will not be the only thing which is broken.

[arti01]

Try dracut -f and restart

[jaywalker]

Problem:

Also kernel 3.3 rc7 was installed during upgrade but it didn't create it's own initrd, just created a dummy symlink, instead it seemed to have merged settings on to existing 2.38 initrd. Luckily everything (except sound) was still working after upgrade. Is there any way i can recreate initrd for 3.3 and not rely on 2.38, which i would probably remove if 3.3 works fine and is relatively stable.

Solution:

Try dracut -f and restart

We should have started with this. Sorry for the oversight.

Richard

[murali]

doktor5000 - While configuring for cauldron from M1, had to face some tough time as i was not able to get initial list, after going back and forth, somehow finally got it working. This is the mirror that i'm using -

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Core\ Release\ (distrib1) http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/mageia/distrib/cauldron/i586/media/core/release {
  key-ids: 80420f66
  update
}


Needless to say it's quite slow, tried looking up in mirrors, but for some reason couldn't get it to configure using http/ftp/rsync. However the upgrade itself went off ok, didn't see any errors as such except for the fact, as i mentioned earlier, it didn't create initrd for 3.3.

Did

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 dracut -f

and restarted, but nothing happened, still no sound, also it didn't create any new initrd for 3.3, still merged onto 2.38

Richard -

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 lsmod | grep snd

didn't return anything so i think this is the main issue.

Also

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 lspcidrake --verbose

gave lot of things from which i grep'ed out for sound and got this -

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 snd_hda_intel   : Intel Corporation|82801H (ICH8 Family) HD Audio Controller (vendor:8086 device:284b subv:17aa subd:20ac) (rev: 03)

It had lot of entries like this - libkmod: index_mm_open: major version check fail: 65537 instead of 2953311319

Not sure if those are something i need to be concerned with or can be ignored.

[murali]

Forgot to mention earlier, i did dig around in the forums here and in google about these issues and tried few things, the ones listed under https://bugs.mageia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2982, but it didn't work.

Also few of the issues listed in the same url is still present in my machine -

1. Slow startup/shutdown - During startup it waits with this message for some time "Starting LSB, waiting for hotplugged network to be up", before finally coming up. Anyway to fix that issue and also speed up bootup by tweaking any system files/settings?

2. When i try to restart from K-Menu, it doesn't restart, but takes me to the login screen and from there i've to initiate restart.

Sorry if i'm introducing more issues before the earlier ones are fixed, but thought of informing since i already opened up a thread.

Thanks.

[jaywalker]

However the upgrade itself went off ok, didn't see any errors as such except for the fact, as i mentioned earlier, it didn't create initrd for 3.3.

I'm sorry murali but I'm afraid that it did not go at all well. Chunks seem to be missing. Where to start.... I think I would probably start again. Also, I wouldn't start from MGA1. In theory it will work for the final MGA2 release, and there are those who would say it should work now, but unless you have good practical reasons for your chosen approach, I would urge you to start with a Cauldron iso. Beta1 is fine though at this stage in its life your first update could be hundreds of packages. Beta2 is due in the next few days.

snd_hda_intel   : Intel Corporation|82801H (ICH8 Family) HD Audio Controller (vendor:8086 device:284b subv:17aa subd:20ac) (rev: 03)

I think that makes it a Lenovo Thinkpad T61. If so it is an AD1984 codec and you can pass a "model=thinkpad" option to the snd-hda-intel module. Of course we first have to get that module to load. It seems likely that there is something getting in the way of proper hardware detection on your system - the lspcidrake command seems to have returned a lot of errors instead of device information.

I'll have to leave it to those more experienced than I am with repository configuration and updates and installation and the like to advise on whether you might be able to fix this. One thing that would be interesting to know is what your boot command line looks like, Can you post the /boot/grub/menu.lst contents? If you have "init=/bin/systemd" it might be worthwhile to delete that and see if good old initscripts can handle the process. Just press F3 on the boot menu, select the default option to get a copy of the boot command and delete the words there for a one-time boot experiment.

[jaywalker]

Anyway to [...] speed up bootup by tweaking any system files/settings?

2. When i try to restart from K-Menu, it doesn't restart, but takes me to the login screen and from there i've to initiate restart.

Sorry if i'm introducing more issues before the earlier ones are fixed, but thought of informing since i already opened up a thread.

Thanks.

A fully functioning up to date Beta1 Cauldron will boot quite quickly for you, I believe, and many of the issues you are suffering will have gone away; possibly even the sound problem too.

Richard

[murali]

Hi Richard,

Yes, it's a Thinkpad, R61 though, not T61. I don't have init in my boot, but i'll give one last try on what you suggested about removing the kernel entries during boot and go with the default. If it works, great, else i'll have to wait for next beta.

It's ok, you've helped quite a bit in this regard, so really appreciate it. The only reason i went with M1 was because M2B didn't had any live iso and downloading 3.5G worth of iso would've been quite time consuming so instead went with M1.

So can i assume if i were to install M2B or final release version, i would be able to upgrade to Cauldron and have a rolling system?

Thanks for all your help.

[jaywalker]

An option which might work well for you would be to get the iso for network installs (is it dual architecture?) It is only about 40 or 50 MBytes and if you start off by finding a mirror which is as fast as possible for your location you can do a very minimal MGA2 install in maybe a gigabyte or less - hint, avoid all the major program groups and the BIG desktops. Once you are up and running you can add in as much or as little as you like until you have a useful system.

[ozky]

Did you owerwrite system-auth.rpnew to system-auth ? you need to do it then your soundcard would work.You can install nano with command urpmi nano from konsole/terminal with root priviledges and then open it with command nano /etc/pam.d/system-auth.rpmnew and save it with crtl+o without .rpmnew and then crtl+x to exit nano and restart computer.

[doktor5000]

Did you owerwrite system-auth.rpnew to system-auth ? you need to do it then your soundcard would work.You can install nano with command urpmi nano from konsole/terminal with root priviledges and then open it with command nano /etc/pam.d/system-auth.rpmnew and save it with crtl+o without .rpmnew and then crtl+x to exit nano and restart computer.

He could also just do

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mv -f /etc/pam.d/system-auth.rpmnew /etc/pam.d/system-auth

no need to install any package for that

[murali]

Didn't login for awhile, so got delayed in replying. Tried network install as suggested by Richard, but didn't quite work, still didn't have any sound.

@ozky & @doktor5000 - yes, i did try this out too, by moving rpmnew to the original file. However for some reason that didn't work either. I'm not too sure at this stage what else i could be missing. And since there is no live image for B2, i'll probably wait for RC or final version, hoping to see a live image then.

I'll close this thread for now, and will reopen if i encounter the same issue with final version.

Thanks all for your help.