[SLL] Speaking of on-topic...

[Kurt Buff]

On Mon, Jun 9, 2008 at 3:32 PM, Kurt Buff <kurt.buff at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 9, 2008 at 1:38 PM, Derek Simkowiak <dereks at realloc.net> wrote:
>> Kurt> /I switched from the ALSA HDA Intel to the Analog Devices AD1894, and
>> it started working./
>> [...]
>> Jarod> /Not quite sure what you mean there... the ALSA HDA Intel driver is
>> what
>> should be driving sound, the Analog Devices AD1894 is the actual audio
>> codec used by this variant of an HDA Intel sound card./
>>
>>
>>   Is it possible this is an ALSA vs. OSS ("Open Source Sound") driver issue?
>>  Sometimes OSS works but not ALSA, or vice versa.
>>
>>   Perhaps the configuration change Kurt made triggered the loading of the
>> OSS sound drivers, thus activating sound.
>>
>>   Jarod's lsmod command shows that both ALSA and OSS are loaded on his
>> system: snd_hda_intel is ALSA, and the snd_pcm_oss is OSS.
>>
>> Jarod Wilson wrote:
>>>
>>> On Mon, 2008-06-09 at 08:27 -0700, Kurt Buff wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Sun, Jun 8, 2008 at 7:16 PM, Jarod Wilson <jarod at wilsonet.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On Sat, 2008-06-07 at 13:14 -0700, Kurt Buff wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I've very recently purchased a new Lenovo T61 with SUSE Linux
>>>>>> Enterprise Desktop 10, SP1, and I'm quite pleased with it so far, with
>>>>>> one exception - I can't get sound to work.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> When I use Helix, or view an online video, I get nothing. I've done
>>>>>> some investigation, and find the following error messages in
>>>>>> /var/log/messages:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Jun  7 13:14:00 GrimSqueaker kernel: ALSA
>>>>>> sound/core/pcm_native.c:2070: snd_pcm_hw_constraints_complete failed
>>>>>> Jun  7 13:14:00 GrimSqueaker kernel: ALSA
>>>>>> sound/core/pcm_native.c:1925: BUG? (err >= 0)
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I find nothing in google regarding this kind of message, and searching
>>>>>> both the Lenovo and Novell web sites yeilds nothing either.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Does anyone have hints on where I might start looking to fix this?
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> The alsa mailing lists are probably the best place to get those messages
>>>>> decoded. That, and/or you might look at whether or not its fixed w/the
>>>>> SLED10 SP2 kernel. For what its worth, I have Fedora 9 on a reasonably
>>>>> new (got it in December) T61, and everything works flawlessly.
>>>>>
>>>
>>> [...]
>>>
>>>>
>>>> After much banging around last night, If found that there were two
>>>> devices, and that when I switched the device, it worked.
>>>>
>>>> I switched from the ALSA HDA Intel to the Analog Devices AD1894, and
>>>> it started working.
>>>>
>>>
>>> Not quite sure what you mean there... the ALSA HDA Intel driver is what
>>> should be driving sound, the Analog Devices AD1894 is the actual audio
>>> codec used by this variant of an HDA Intel sound card.
>>>
>>>
>>> My own T61:
>>>
>>> $ dmesg | less
>>> [...]
>>> hda_intel: probe_mask set to 0x1 for device 17aa:20ac
>>> PCI: Setting latency timer of device 0000:00:1b.0 to 64
>>> ALSA sound/pci/hda/hda_intel.c:1810: chipset global capabilities =
>>> 0x4401
>>> ALSA sound/pci/hda/hda_intel.c:749: codec_mask = 0x3
>>> ALSA sound/pci/hda/hda_codec.c:2236: hda_codec: model 'thinkpad' is
>>> selected for config 17aa:0 (Lenovo Thinkpad)
>>> [...]
>>>
>>> $ lsmod |grep snd
>>> snd_hda_intel         447540  4 snd_seq_dummy          11524  0
>>> snd_seq_oss            39232  0 snd_seq_midi_event     15104  1 snd_seq_oss
>>> snd_seq                61840  5
>>> snd_seq_dummy,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_midi_event
>>> snd_seq_device         15508  3 snd_seq_dummy,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq
>>> snd_pcm_oss            52096  0 snd_mixer_oss          23296  2
>>> snd_pcm_oss
>>> snd_pcm                86024  2 snd_hda_intel,snd_pcm_oss
>>> snd_timer              29584  2 snd_seq,snd_pcm
>>> snd_page_alloc         16912  2 snd_hda_intel,snd_pcm
>>> snd_hwdep              16520  1 snd_hda_intel
>>> snd                    66808  16
>>>
>>> snd_hda_intel,snd_seq_dummy,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq,snd_seq_device,snd_pcm_oss,snd_mixer_oss,snd_pcm,snd_timer,snd_hwdep
>>> soundcore              14864  2 snd
>>>
>>>
>>> And finally, PulseAudio shows my output device as:
>>>
>>> ALSA PCM on front:0 (AD198x Analog) via DMA
>
> At this point, I'm stumped. Rebooting after reconfiguring under YAST
> yields nothing, even resetting to what I presume is default.

Well, crikey!

My machine finally contacted the mothership, and downloaded and
installed huge buncha updates, and now sound is working. Um, strange,
but true.

Kurt