Alsa seems to be causing system to hang on boot

English Install/Boot/Login
#1

Fresh install of opensuse 12.1 x86_64 (kde), machine has an onboard sound which gets configured as a usb card, and a pci soundblaster audigy, when booting the system hangs after mounting the root partition and I see messages regarding alsa mixer:

Jan  2 13:58:47 beastie kernel:    17.206062] ALSA mixer.c:795 11:0: cannot get min/max values for control 2 (id 11)
Jan  2 13:58:47 beastie kernel:    17.206135] ALSA mixer.c:795 13:0: cannot get min/max values for control 2 (id 13)
Jan  2 13:58:47 beastie kernel:    17.206201] ALSA mixer.c:795 8:0: cannot get min/max values for control 2 (id 8)
Jan  2 13:58:47 beastie kernel:    17.206266] ALSA mixer.c:795 2:0: cannot get min/max values for control 2 (id 2)
Jan  2 13:58:47 beastie kernel:    17.209032] ALSA mixer.c:795 16:0: cannot get min/max values for control 2 (id 16)
Jan  2 13:58:47 beastie kernel:    17.212027] ALSA mixer.c:795 15:0: cannot get min/max values for control 2 (id 15)

I pulled those out of /var/log/messages where I also found these:

Jan  2 13:59:14 beastie pulseaudio[2484]: [pulseaudio] alsa-mixer.c: Volume element Speaker has 8 channels. That's too much! I can't handle that!
Jan  2 13:59:14 beastie pulseaudio[2484]: [pulseaudio] alsa-mixer.c: Volume element Speaker has 8 channels. That's too much! I can't handle that!
Jan  2 13:59:14 beastie pulseaudio[2484]: [pulseaudio] alsa-mixer.c: Volume element Speaker has 8 channels. That's too much! I can't handle that!

The first set of messages I see on screen during boot when pressing Esc, the second I don’t, but I also discovered something else. If I disable the onboard card in bios system won’t boot, if I delete the onboard card’s configuration in yast, then disable the onboard card it boots

With the card disabled though, I don’t see the messages, but it hangs even longer

Any thoughts?

#2

Try turning off pulse. Can be done from the configuration in Yast

#3

Tried that mate, makes no difference

Sometime later when I’ve a got a bit more time on my hands I’ll try removing the soundblaster

It’ll mean I won’t have the front console for plugging in guitars etc but it is a pretty old card and if it does turn out to be that it’ll be an excuse to treat myself to a nice new one

The onboard one has proved to be a bit temperamental on various versions of opensuse as well as other linux flavours but if I’m forced to live with it for now then so be it

#4

hmmmmmm …reads like a possible bad install to me.

Still if a good install then imho you are in bug reporting territory.

What is the behaviour when doing a failsafe boot?

#5

Sorry for being so slow in replying, but I’ve discovered that it isn’t alsa which causes the hang, it’s systemd

If I boot in system v I still get the alsa errors, but no hang

I understand this is a known issue for which there is a bug report, doesn’t seem to be a reliable fix/workaround for the issue though, at least one that I’ve been able to find anyway

Incidentally, I removed the soundblaster and still get the alsa errors, and I still get them if I disable the onboard sound in bios so it just seems to alsa grumbling about something as sound does work, so thanks for the input guys but I think this thread has now become moot as it’s not alsa causing the boot hang issue