I’m writing because recently I installed Opensuse LEAP 42.1 in a new computer. I had some install problems, but finally managed to solve everything thanks to the people of this forum
The thing is, that after some point - I don’t remember if I updated or installed something new- the sound stopped working, and it worked perfectly!! (and everything else). I checked pulseaudio and the only output I could find is “Dummy audio” and nothing else. So I started looking for information on how to solve this issue, but unfortunately without success.
So I’m posting here what I found and what I did. Also, I will post all hardware information I think is relevant.
First of all, I discovered that a lot of people suffered this problem, but mostly ubuntu users. Even so, I tried to follow almost every forum post and guide I found on how to solve it, but without success. (It’s worth mention than almost every guide says more or less the same things, so not really a lot of things to do).
Installed pavucontrol and it shows the same as pulseaudio: “Dummy output”.
Removed and reinstalled all alsa packages and pulseaudio, then reboot and see that I fixed nothing. Everything was the same.
I put my user in audio group, but nothing changed.
Then, I started looking if opensuse recognizes, in some way, my audio drivers.
EDIT: I don’t know why I posted before finishing the post, sorry for that, please wait while I finish it
I can’t edit for more than 10 minutes and right now, I don’t have time for finish the initial post, please someone delete this thread and I will make a new one when I have time.
I already contacted the admin, but just in case I post here also.
Well, seen that the thread is still open, I’ll post here the rest of the issue instead of opening a new one.
I just needed to add the outputs of some commands that I used for test the hardware. Here they are:
If I run in therminal
aplay --list-devices
I get the output
aplay: device_list:268: no soundcards found...
If I run the code
modprobe snd_hda_intel
I get the output
modprobe: ERROR: ctx=0x1af6010 path=/lib/modules/4.1.31-30-default/kernel/sound/pci/hda/snd-hda-controller.ko error=No such file or directory
modprobe: ERROR: ctx=0x1af6010 path=/lib/modules/4.1.31-30-default/kernel/sound/pci/hda/snd-hda-controller.ko error=No such file or directory
modprobe: ERROR: could not insert 'snd_hda_intel': Unknown symbol in module, or unknown parameter (see dmesg)
And finally, I tested the whole hardware by running
/usr/sbin/hwinfo
and, got a really big list, but I discovered that yes, opensuse recognizes I have 2 audio hardware, one for NVidia and other for the motherboard (realtek hd audio), here is the information about the two sound cards I have:
23: PCI 1b.0: 0403 Audio device
[Created at pci.366]
Unique ID: u1Nb.KQcCGfWUeXB
SysFS ID: /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1b.0
SysFS BusID: 0000:00:1b.0
Hardware Class: sound
Model: "Intel 9 Series Chipset Family HD Audio Controller"
Vendor: pci 0x8086 "Intel Corporation"
Device: pci 0x8ca0 "9 Series Chipset Family HD Audio Controller"
SubVendor: pci 0x1458 "Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd"
SubDevice: pci 0xa182
Memory Range: 0xf7310000-0xf7313fff (rw,non-prefetchable)
IRQ: 11 (no events)
Module Alias: "pci:v00008086d00008CA0sv00001458sd0000A182bc04sc03i00"
Driver Info #0:
Driver Status: snd_hda_intel is not active
Driver Activation Cmd: "modprobe snd_hda_intel"
Config Status: cfg=no, avail=yes, need=no, active=unknown
33: PCI 100.1: 0403 Audio device
[Created at pci.366]
Unique ID: NXNs.iz6+xsCfMIA
Parent ID: vSkL.3rEhpzAE0V6
SysFS ID: /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:01.0/0000:01:00.1
SysFS BusID: 0000:01:00.1
Hardware Class: sound
Model: "nVidia Audio device"
Vendor: pci 0x10de "nVidia Corporation"
Device: pci 0x10f1
SubVendor: pci 0x1458 "Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd"
SubDevice: pci 0x3716
Revision: 0xa1
Memory Range: 0xf7080000-0xf7083fff (rw,non-prefetchable)
IRQ: 10 (no events)
Module Alias: "pci:v000010DEd000010F1sv00001458sd00003716bc04sc03i00"
Driver Info #0:
Driver Status: snd_hda_intel is not active
Driver Activation Cmd: "modprobe snd_hda_intel"
Config Status: cfg=no, avail=yes, need=no, active=unknown
Attached to: #19 (PCI bridge)
I used also others commands of alsa, but they all say the same: that the sound card doesn’t exist or, a few, say the same information as above.
Also, I tried to download and install manually the realtek audio drivers, but got some error in the installation process.
And I think that’s pretty much it. In the posts I read about the same issue, the people could solve it normally by manually change some files related with “modprobe snd_hda_intel” but my computer appears not to have those files.
I don’t know what to do, but I’m sure I can fix it because when I did the installation, the sound worked properly and then stopped. Any guesses? Maybe is because I have two sound cards?
Go to Yast sound set up and see what is there. Note the device 0 is the default so sometime changing the order of the drivers can help. There are also test sounds that can be played
If you can’t make progress on your own, then it maybe necessary to provide more info about your audio hardware. This can be done by running the following diagnostic script
/usr/sbin/alsa-info.sh
It will upload the output to an online server and generate a URL that you canpost here so that we can view it online.
I tried that, but is impossible to me to find any sound output appart from “Dummy output” see here (same for pavuaudio): http://i68.tinypic.com/euewb5.png
No you are missing things. Like the sound drivers and the yast sound modal
Never saw those missing so at a lose of what went wrong.
The hardware is not exotic and should work but you have to have the drivers working and normally that is done via yast-sound modual which is also missing :\
Have you done all updates? Assuming you have not added a bunch of non-standard repos I’d give zypper dup a try If in doubt show us zypper lr -d before you do the dup
If that fails then a reinstall using the upgrade option.
I’ve tried before doing a zypper update and zypper dup, but nothing happened, then a few minutes ago, I just tried again and… magically says I have some updates pending!!, all of them were alsa related!!, so I did de dup and… now I have the **Sound **menu in **YaST>Hardware!! **Some progress at least, but nothing else is changed (respect to the sound), I still have the same “Dummy output”. The only thing that is changed is that I get now an error in log-in saying something like “oops, there were a login problem…” but it logs-in after that screen is shown.
Well, I’ve tried changing the sound cards in that “new” menu and I got some error. I’ll post here the images and you can see:
The difference is that in advanced mode, previous to get that error, I see a menu with different options, this one: http://i65.tinypic.com/2dqpsba.png
Coming back to the repositories thing, when I first installed opensuse, the first thing I did was add packman and nvidia repositories, then do a zypper up and installed around 700-800 new packages. I’m not sure if that has something to do, but in that moment, after installing all of them and reboot, I still had sound. I just noticed a minor problem: when I log-in with my user, the first attempt of password never let me log-in, but if I do ESC and try again, it works (it still happens and is kind of annoying ). In any case, the output of zypper lr -d is the following:
Today, a few minutes ago, I received the notification of a new important update available, it was a kernel update. After updating and rebooting, the sound is working perfectly again!! This is so strange, I don’t know why this stuff happened It seems that I just had to wait until the system recognizes I needed the update…
In any way, thank you very much for your time, dedication and help, I really appreciate it
I usually try to help with sound, but between work being very busy and me ill for part of the week I did not make it to the forum for some days so I’m happy you came up with a solution (via a kernel update).
there is a lot of information there, but if one studies it one can see it often points to the problem where one’s attention should be focussed. In your case when the PCs sound was not working , note this from the script output:
!!---------------
!!Kernel Information
!!------------------
Kernel release: 4.1.31-30-default
....
!!ALSA Version
!!------------
Driver version:
Library version: 1.0.29
Utilities version: 1.0.29
...
!!Loaded ALSA modules
!!-------------------
!!Soundcards recognised by ALSA
!!-----------------------------
!!PCI Soundcards installed in the system
!!--------------------------------------
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 9 Series Chipset Family HD Audio Controller
01:00.1 Audio device: NVIDIA Corporation Device 10f1 (rev a1)
Note what is in Red. There is nothing under “Loaded ALSA modules”. There is nothing under “Soundcards recognised by ALSA”. Even thou the sound cards are recognized by openSUSE they are not recognized by Alsa.
The problem clearly was that the alsa sound modules were not loaded. Hence the focus for the problem had to be on how to load the alsa modules. In your case, installing a new kernel possibly meant different alsa version (speculation on my part) and may thus addressed that problem.
.
I’m assuming that openSUSE enumerates the sound cards by their device class (04) eg
lspci -nnk|grep '\04'
but that doesn’t mean that kernel support exists for a given device of course
The problem clearly was that the alsa sound modules were not loaded. Hence the focus for the problem had to be on how to load the alsa modules. In your case, installing a new kernel possibly meant different alsa version (speculation on my part) and may thus addressed that problem.
.
More specifically, a newer kernel version would employ a newer snd-hda-intel module with explicit support for the vid=8086 pid=8ca0 and vid=10de pid=10f1 chipsets
This can be shown using
modinfo snd-hda-intel|egrep "10f1|8ca0"
The current openSUSE kernel (4.1.31-30-default) doesn’t include these chipsets.
). In any case, the output of zypper lr -d is the following:
It seems that I just had to wait until the system recognizes I needed the update…