I have 2 pc with Asus AMD boards (M4A87TD Evo and M4A88TD-M Evo) running OpenSuse 11.3
on both the front panel audio headset + mic do not work.
on one PC I have an other OS also installed, so I know that on this machine the hardware is working.
is there a chance to get the frontpanel audio connectors running with the actual openSuse
or do I have to wait for the next version with a newer kernel/alsa version?
some hardware info:
aplay -l
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: SB [HDA ATI SB], device 0: ALC892 Analog [ALC892 Analog]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: SB [HDA ATI SB], device 1: ALC892 Digital [ALC892 Digital]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: HDMI [HDA ATI HDMI], device 3: ATI HDMI [ATI HDMI]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
I can switch to Headphones output, speaker mutes but I hear nothing in my headphones.
I have trailed several combinations with gmixer and the default sound preferences dialog from gnome but without success.
on my older board, also Asus + onboard (m2npv-vm) mic and headphons via frontpanel work without any problems with openSuse.
so I thought this is some alsa related thing, need a newer version
or just some configuration stuff that I don’t know…
If you wish this checked, you need to set up the PC the way you think it should be set up to record from the front mic. Looking at the settings in your mixer on this 1st PC, I honestly do not believe you did that. I type that because CLEARLY the mixer is set wrong. So please set up the mixer properly. Test. And only then with THAT mixer setting in place, run the diagnostic script again and post it here. For example, LOOK at these mixer settings that came from that above script that you ran and that I quote:
!!Amixer output
!!-------------
!!-------Mixer controls for card 0 [SB]
**
Card hw:0 'SB'/'HDA ATI SB at 0xfe6f4000 irq 16'**
Mixer name : 'Realtek ALC892'
Components : 'HDA:10ec0892,1043841b,00100302'
Controls : 31
Simple ctrls : 18
**Simple mixer control 'Front Mic',0**
Front Left: Playback 19 [61%] -6.00dB] [on]
Front Right: Playback 19 [61%] -6.00dB] [on]
**Simple mixer control 'Front Mic Boost',0**
Front Left: 2 [67%]
Front Right: 2 [67%]
**Simple mixer control 'Center',0**
Mono: Playback 64 [100%] [0.00dB] [on]
**Simple mixer control 'Line',0**
Front Left: Playback 0 **[0%]** -34.50dB] [on]
Front Right: Playback 0 **[0%]** -34.50dB] [on]
**Simple mixer control 'Mic',0**
Front Left: Playback 12 [39%] -16.50dB] **[off]**
Front Right: Playback 12 [39%] -16.50dB] **[off]**
**Simple mixer control 'Mic Boost',0**
Front Left: 0 **[0%]**
Front Right: 0 **[0%]**
**Simple mixer control 'Capture',0**
Front Left: Capture 25 [54%] [9.00dB] [on]
Front Right: Capture 25 [54%] [9.00dB] [on]
**Simple mixer control 'Capture',1**
Front Left: Capture 0 **[0%]** -16.00dB] [on]
Front Right: Capture 0 **[0%]** -16.00dB] [on]
**Simple mixer control 'Input Source',0**
Items: 'Mic' 'Front Mic' 'Line'
Item0: **'Mic'**
**Simple mixer control 'Input Source',1**
Items: 'Mic' 'Front Mic' 'Line'
Item0: **'Mic'**
Now, I have no idea as to what capture in the mixer you are directing the front mic, because you did NOT select it. Why ? Of course it won’t work if not selected. Also, even if you did select it, you need to ensure the corresponding capture is not OFF/Muted or at 0%. This mixer is badly misconfigured. As setup it would be a miracle if it worked.
first pc is a bit strange, I have a lot of messages running over the screen on booting that I only see when I press ESc to exit the boot splash
I think those appears mostly after doing sound config but I am not sure.
unfortunately those messages do not appear in boot.log or dmesg or syslog or errlog
messages are something like …malloc …name to long…
is here a way to dump these boot messages to somewhere so that I can review them?
by browsing the log files I found this in /var/log/warn on the first pc where frontpanel still is not working
If the mic still does not work, you could be into bug reporting territory. I note this from the Audio.txt file that comes with the alsa driver documentation:
HD-AUDIO CONTROLLER
DMA-Position Problem
The most common problem of the controller is the inaccurate DMA pointer reporting. The DMA pointer for playback and capture can be read in two ways, either via a LPIB register or via a position-buffer map. As default the driver tries to read from the io-mapped position-buffer, and falls back to LPIB if the position-buffer appears dead. However, this detection isn't perfect on some devices. In such a case, you can change the default method via `position_fix` option.
position_fix=1 means to use LPIB method explicitly. position_fix=2 means to use the position-buffer. 0 is the default value, the automatic check and fallback to LPIB as described in the above. If you get a problem of repeated sounds, this option might help.
In addition to that, every controller is known to be broken regarding the wake-up timing. It wakes up a few samples before actually processing the data on the buffer. This caused a lot of problems, for example, with ALSA dmix or JACK. Since 2.6.27 kernel, the driver puts an artificial delay to the wake up timing. This delay is controlled via bdl_pos_adj option.
When bdl_pos_adj is a negative value (as default), it’s assigned to an appropriate value depending on the controller chip. For Intel chips, it’d be 1 while it’d be 32 for others. Usually this works. Only in case it doesn’t work and you get warning messages, you should change this parameter to other values.
Thats all interesting but I can’t provide good advise as to how to proceed there.
I recommend you write a bug report on openSUSE-11.3 component “sound” which will get the attention of the SuSE-GmbH sound packager (who is also an alsa sound developer). There is guidance here for raising a bug report: openSUSE:Submitting bug reports - openSUSE User your openSUSE forum user name and password when logging on to Novell’s bugzilla. Ensure your bug report is complete as the SuSE-GmbH packager will refuse to read a forum thread. Ensure you set up your mixer as accurate as you can and copy to the bug report the file alsa-info.txt that you get from running:
/usr/sbin/alsa-info.sh --no-upload
Then every day or two check on the status of the bug report and answer any questions you may be asked. Be certain to clear the “NEED INFO” flag after you answer the packagers/developers questions.
