Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) sound woes

[oldcpu]

Originally Posted by satanlair911

Hi oldcpu,

I performed all the steps you suggested in your last post, but sadly no sound was heard.

What's next to be done? All my channels are at max volume and I can hear my PC Speaker(beep) perfectly.

My /etc/modprobe.d/sound* files look like these:

cat /etc/modprobe.d/sound.YaST2save
alias snd-card-0 snd-hda-intel
alias sound-slot-0 snd-hda-intel

cat /etc/modprobe.d/sound
alias snd-card-0 snd-hda-intel
alias sound-slot-0 snd-hda-intel

Best Regards,
Satan Lair

When testing for sound, please use the 3 different methods for testing for sound from the openSUSE audio troubleshooting guide, step-3: SDB:AudioTroubleshooting - openSUSE [ie the same as noted in post#4 above]. If any one of them give sound, then your sound functions. Ensure you move up both PCM and Master volume (and speaker volume if there is such a control). You can do this in your mixer. Test this as a regular user, with speakers and headphones. Also test with regular user permissions, and open a terminal and test with root permissions.

I would also like to do a quality check on the software you installed. Please provide the output of:

rpm -qa | grep alsa
rpm -qa | grep pulse
rpm -q libasound2
uname -a

Also provide output URL of running

/usr/sbin/alsa-info.sh

[China_Jobs]

Yast>Hardware>Sound

Select Edit model

add ref

select ok

follow it though and reboot your sound.

Close Yast, restart kmix or what ever it is in Gnome.

open kmix or ... un-mute and turn the volume up on everything, in my case I chose 'right'.

Close mixer, make sure volume is at a reasonable level.

Reboot your puter. after you login, you should be hearing the startup file play.

enjoy.

Originally Posted by satanlair911

Hello Everybody!!

I just can't get sound to work on SuSE 11.1 desktop system.

Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) High Definition Audio Controller (rev 01) is my sound card.

I've tried everything from raising the volume on each and every channel to updating the kernel specific alsa driver. You name it, I've done it!!

Here's the link to my /usr/sbin/alsa-info.sh output:

http://www.alsa-project.org/db/?f=c0...4f4feecdb579e5


Looking to hear from you guys.

Satan

[oldcpu]

Originally Posted by China_Jobs

Yast>Hardware>Sound
Select Edit model
add ref
select ok
follow it though and reboot your sound.

China_Jobs, welcome to openSUSE forums.

I note you replied to a number of sound support threads, and in every case recommended the application of the model "ref".

In fact, that model option does NOT work in most cases. If one looks at the 1.0.18 version of alsa-configuration.txt file, and does a search for ref, one will find that option "might" only work for the following options ...

STAC9200, STAC9205/9254, STAC9220/9221, STAC9202/9250/9251, STAC9227/9228/9229/927x, STAC92HD71B*, STAC92HD73*

In the case of user satanlair911 the hardware audio codec on their PC is an ALC883 and not a "stacxxxx". Hence I believe ref would likely break their sound, as opposed to fix it. One needs to be very precise on the model options that are applied, and they must be selected from the alsa-configuration.txt or hd-audio-models.txt file that is documented by the alsa packagers.

We can use all the help we can get in the forums, so if you get the chance you could read the following files (comes with the documentation in every alsa tarball):

• alsa-configuration.txt
• hd-audio-models.txt
• hd-audio.txt

and that should shed some light on this, and the various aspects associated with troubleshooting Linux sound.

[crisponions]

Did you ever find a solution? I am having the same issue on SLED 11. I fixed it back in March by updating to alsa 1.0.19, but I just rebuilt my system and cant find that build anymore.

I updated to alsa 1.0.21 but I seem to have to restart alsasound after rebooting in order to get sound to work.

What is interesting is some sound works before restarting. System sounds do not, youtube doesn't, but mplayer does, and the yast test sound does.

[oldcpu]

Originally Posted by crisponions

What is interesting is some sound works before restarting. System sounds do not, youtube doesn't, but mplayer does, and the yast test sound does.

IMHO this is a symptom that some device has seized the audio device and has not let go of it. And thus the only applications that will play audio are those who have an output audio model selected that allows sharing of audio.

In the past only the alsa api would allow sharing of one audio device between multiple applications. Recently pulse audio is supposed to allow this, but it is still buggy in its implementation. Note just because you have alsa installed, does not mean an application will use the alsa api (in addition to using the alsa underlying driver). Some openSUSE sound concepts: Sound-concepts - openSUSE

The openSUSE audio troubleshooting guide has some parts that might be applicable to SLED. For example, take a look this section which provides advice on determining which application is using the sound device: SDB:AudioTroubleshooting - openSUSE

Run the code (in a terminal) to characterize your sound application use:

lsof /dev/dsp* /dev/audio* /dev/mixer* /dev/snd/*

ie run it when your sound works well, ... copy the output and save it to a text file, and keep that file. Then next time you reboot (or on another occasion) when you have a problem, run that code again. Copy the output and save it to a text file. Then compare the files. Are they different? If different, they might point to an application that is badly behaved and is not letting go of your PCs sound device when the application is closed.

[cmcevoy]

The following works in 11.2 (and maybe earlier versions as well)

Open YAST Sound
Select and Edit the 82801G card
Use the Advanced option
Set position_fix to 1
Set model to 3stack

That's it!!
Music at last!

[oldcpu]

Originally Posted by cmcevoy

The following works in 11.2 (and maybe earlier versions as well)

Open YAST Sound
Select and Edit the 82801G card
Use the Advanced option
Set position_fix to 1
Set model to 3stack

That's it!!
Music at last!

Congratulations. I take it then you solved your segfault problem ? Sudo segfaults on clean install of 11.2 - openSUSE Forums

It should not have been ncessary to set position_fix=1 nor model=3stack.

Reference your sound fix, can you write a bug report on this, noting your fix? Guidance on how to raise bug reports here: Submitting Bug Reports - openSUSE please
Please be certain to raise the report against openSUSE-11.2 component "sound". This will get the attention of the SuSE-GmbH packager for sound, who is also an alsa developer. They will hopefully be able to fix the alsa driver auto probe, and they then send the fix upstream, such that all Linux distributions can benefit from your fix.

[cmcevoy]

I'll submit the sound fix - thanks for the suggestion
Unfortunately the sudo problem persists, but it doesn't affect anything other than sudo on the command line so I can run all the desktop configs fine. Sudo works fine on my laptop anyway (prompt for root password) - it is just the desktop machine that prompts for pam_mount password and segfaults.