No sound after installing KDE 4

[OpenSourceSociety]

Running openSuSE 10.3.

I installed KDE 4 alongside KDE 3.5.9 last night, and now I have no sound in either.

I have gone through all the troubleshooting steps in the Audio Troubleshooting guide, and everything looks like it should be working, yet I still have nothing coming out of my speakers. I have double-checked the volume settings, uninstalled KDE 4, and re-installed ALSA, all had no effect. Help I have to have sound for work!

[oldcpu]

I installed KDE 4 alongside KDE 3.5.9 last night, and now I have no sound in either.

OK, please can you do the following so we can help you:

a. run again (with your current configuration) the two diagnostic scripts recommended in the audio troubleshooting guide, and please post here the URLs that they generate.
Diagnostic scripts for sound troubleshooting

The openSUSE servers are being clobbered with hits from the announcement of openSUSE-11.0, so it may be a while before you can connect to download those scripts (unless you still have them from your earlier attempts with the troubleshooting guide).

b. copy and paste the following into a konsole (one line at a time) and post the output here:
rpm -qa | grep alsa
rpm -qa | grep pulse
rpm -q libasound2
uname -a
cat /etc/modprobe.d/sound

[OpenSourceSociety]

alsa-info.sh output is at: general pastebin - josh - post number 1051122

tsalsa output is at: tsalsa.txt - nopaste.com (beta)

rpm -qa | grep alsa
alsa-plugins-1.0.14-41
alsa-plugins-pulse-1.0.14-41
kalsatools-1.5.0-468
alsa-oss-1.0.14-23
alsa-devel-1.0.14-31.2
alsa-firmware-1.0.14-24
alsa-utils-1.0.14-27
alsa-1.0.14-31.2
cairo-dock-alsaMixer-1.5.5.4-1.pm.20080506
alsa-tools-gui-1.0.14-38
alsa-tools-1.0.14-38

rpm -qa | grep pulse
alsa-plugins-pulse-1.0.14-41
libpulsecore5-0.9.10-0.pm.1
pulseaudio-0.9.10-0.pm.1
libpulse0-0.9.10-0.pm.1
libpulse-browse0-0.9.10-0.pm.1

rpm -q libasound2
libasound2-1.0.14-31.2

uname -a
Linux Fred 2.6.22.18-0.2-default #1 SMP 2008-06-09 13:53:20 +0200 i686 athlon i386 GNU/Linux

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

Let me know if I need to provide any more info. Thank you!

[oldcpu]

uname -a
Linux Fred 2.6.22.18-0.2-default #1 SMP 2008-06-09 13:53:20 +0200 i686 athlon i386 GNU/Linux

This could be difficult to help you sort, unless you have average or better linux knowlege. First, I notice you have a non-standard openSUSE kernel 2.6.22.18-0.2-default which presumably you got from here:
Index of /repositories/home:/hschaa:/wireless/openSUSE_10.3
Were you forced to install that because of wireless compatibility reasons? Because that kernel version is your first problem.

Your second problem is you tried to install kde-4.x instead of sticking with 3.5.9. I don't do those sorts of updates myself as I find them a bother to sort various problems, ... so now that I know what you have done, I'm not particular keen on spending time on this.

Given how fast it is to install 11.0, why not just download and install that. I'll bet that is a LOT FASTER than trying to sort this problem.

The difficulty here is for openSUSE-10.3, the alsa drivers are built for the original (10.3 as delivered) 2.6.22.5 kernel, or the 2.6.22.17 kernels (10.3 as updated), but NOT for this custom kernel. Which means you could very well be forced to custom compile alsa. Add to that your installing KDE-4.x with all of its pulse audio applications, and that just adds "fuel to the fire".

If you are back on KDE-3.5.7, then you could simply try removing the pulse audio packages, maybe keeping libpulse-simple0-0.9.10-0.pm.1 and libpulse0-0.9.10-0.pm.1. I suppose you could try the same on 3.5.9. Then test your audio.

Your audio codec is a conexant cx20549, which is also known as a Conexant 5045. If your PC is a laptop, and sound still does not work after trimming the pulse audio apps, you could try editing your /etc/modprobe.d/sound file such that it reads:
options snd-hda-intel enable=1 index=0 model=laptop
alias snd-card-0 snd-hda-intel
alias sound-slot-0 snd-hda-intel
Then restart alsa from a konsole with root permissions with:
rcalsasound restart
... and again test your audio.

If that doesn't work, then you could try recompiling ALL of the alsa applications. And failing that, you could revert to the 2.6.22.17 kernel.

[OpenSourceSociety]

This could be difficult to help you sort, unless you have average or better linux knowlege. First, I notice you have a non-standard openSUSE kernel 2.6.22.18-0.2-default which presumably you got from here:
Index of /repositories/home:/hschaa:/wireless/openSUSE_10.3
Were you forced to install that because of wireless compatibility reasons? Because that kernel version is your first problem

I went back and looked in YaST Package manager and that kernel came from the main update repository of 10.3, I installed it this morning. I have had various other problems since upgrading past 2.6.22.16, and I'm not opposed to downgrading to test that out, however until this morning I was running 2.6.22.17 from the main update repo, and the problem with ALSA started before that.

Your second problem is you tried to install kde-4.x instead of sticking with 3.5.9. I don't do those sorts of updates myself as I find them a bother to sort various problems, ... so now that I know what you have done, I'm not particular keen on spending time on this.

I agree this was a stupid thing to do, even though I did a lot of homework to try and find out if installing both KDEs side-by-side would cause problems, and couldn't find any instances that it did. Apparently this was not true in my case.

Given how fast it is to install 11.0, why not just download and install that. I'll bet that is a LOT FASTER than trying to sort this problem.

I would love to do this but this is a laptop I use for work with a lot of important information that I can't lose access to for so much as 2 hours, and I'm generally not fond of downloading new updates the day they are released for stability reasons (Sabayon burned me REALLY bad on this once). Once I'm sure 11.0 is stable and mostly bug-free, I'm all over downloading it, so if I have to wait until then for my sound to work, so be it.

If you are back on KDE-3.5.7, then you could simply try removing the pulse audio packages, maybe keeping libpulse-simple0-0.9.10-0.pm.1 and libpulse0-0.9.10-0.pm.1. I suppose you could try the same on 3.5.9. Then test your audio.

I did try this, but it did not seem to have an effect.

I really appreciate your help and I understand that given the odd setup I'm running on it's asking a lot to request people to troubleshoot with me. I'm going to fiddle some more and see what I can come up with.

[OpenSourceSociety]

I bit the bullet and upgraded to 11.0. This fixed my sound issues, and so far seems to be quite stable Thanks for your help oldcpu!

[oldcpu]

I bit the bullet and upgraded to 11.0. This fixed my sound issues, and so far seems to be quite stable Thanks for your help oldcpu!

Well Done!! And thank you for sharing your solution.

One of the big features of 11.0, that too few people talk about, is its speed of installation has been DRAMATICALLY reduced.

I've got 11.0 running on my test PC, and after determining my prevous problem with 11.0 beta1 thru to RC1 to GM was a hardware problem (bad hard drive), I swapped out my hard drive with an old 40GByte drive I had lying around, installed 11.0 on that replacement (but old) hard drive, and all is well ! [But I can't live with a 40GB Hard drive in this PC, so I have to buy a new larger hard drive ]

[cygnuslodge]

"I went back and looked in YaST Package manager and that kernel came from the main update repository of 10.3,"

I can confirm this, it was offered as a Security Update by openSUSE updater.

I also had problems with sound/alsa after this update as an alsa 1.0.17 rc1 version from one of the development repo's was installed as part of the kernel update and my modprobe.d/sound file was over written. It also messed up KMix too. Reverting to alsa 1.0.16 and waiting half a day for the next update to alsa-driver-kmp-default has returned everything to normal. Sometimes a bit of patience can save a lot of heartache too.

[oldcpu]

> "I went back and looked in YaST Package manager and that kernel
> came from the main update repository of 10.3,"

I can confirm this, it was offered as a Security Update by openSUSE updater.

Interesting ... I went and took a look at:

Index of /update/10.3/rpm
and confirmed that as of 10-June the 2.6.22.18 kernel has been available. I didn't know that, and apologies for my above comments.

I also went to:
Index of /repositories/multimedia:/audio/openSUSE_10.3_Update
and confirmed their are alsa updates to the 2.6.22.18-0.2 kernel.

So it looks like I am now going to have to update my Alsa-update - openSUSE wiki to account for this.