Unable to configure sound card OpenSuSE 15.6

English Hardware
1

Howdy! I have a sound card configuration problem that seems to be very similar to a problem reported in this thread - No sound card detected on openSUSE Leap 15.6 Unfortunately no solution or resolution was reached, so I would like to sort of pick up from where things left off.

I am running the pipewire sound system under OpenSuSE 15.6 x64 with the KDE/Plasma/X11 desktop. This is on my Dell XPS 15 9530

And like the soul who posted on the referenced thread, I cannot get YaST2 to configure my sound card. Each time I try to configure what the YaST ā†’ Sound Configuration module, is presenting, for the Card Model, as simply Intel Corporation. Clicking the Edit button using ā€œNormal Setupā€, (BTW the Test check button produces no sound) I get a result page that appears as a success saying the card was configured with -

Configured as sound card number
Driver snd-sof-pci-intel-tgl

Clicking OK seems to work OK but when I reopen the YaST2 ā†’ Sound Configuration it comes back and tells me the Intel sound card is again not configured! If instead of using the ā€œNormal Setupā€ I use the ā€œQuick Automatic Setupā€ button both the Sound configuration and YaST2 itself crash and hang becoming non-responsive to keyboard or mouse input. I have to use the kill -9 app to get rid of all the YaST2 processes and to get rid of the dialog windows.

To answer the other questions asked in the above referenced thread, I have placed the ALSA information at
Alsa Project Link

inxi -Aa produces -

inxi -Aa
Audio:
Device-1: Intel Raptor Lake-P/U/H cAVS vendor: Dell
driver: sof-audio-pci-intel-tgl
alternate: snd_hda_intel,snd_sof_pci_intel_tgl bus-ID: 0000:00:1f.3
chip-ID: 8086:51ca class-ID: 0401
API: ALSA v: k6.4.0-150600.23.30-default status: kernel-api with: aoss
type: oss-emulator tools: alsactl,alsamixer,amixer
Server-1: PipeWire v: 1.0.5 status: off with: 1: pipewire-pulse
status: off 2: wireplumber status: off tools: pactl,pw-cat,pw-cli,wpctl

The sof-firmare package version is -
sof-firmware | Firmware data files for SOF Drivers | 2024.09-150600.3.3.1

That seems to be the answers to all the questions asked in the other thread.

HTHs and thanks in advance for all efforts to help me figure out why my sound configuration is sickā€¦

Marcā€¦

2

A couple of points to start with before we get down to the sound card issueā€¦

  1. Donā€™t use the YaST sound configuration module - it is considered deprecated and will generally not lead to a successful configuration anyway.

  2. When posting commands and output, it is good practice to use the preformatted text ā€˜</>ā€™ button in the forum editor. That preserves the formatting and makes the output easier to read in its

I note that the inxi output that you shared does show an ALSA driver loaded, but reports that pipewire, pipewire-pulse and wireplumber services are off. Are they even enabled?

Show the results of

systemctl --user list-units | egrep -i "wire|pulse"
3

If necessary enable and start the units immediately with
systemctl --user --now wireplumber pipewire.socket pipewire-pulse.socket
(Some users explicitly enable the pipewire.service and pipewire-pulse.service units, but socket activation should be all that is required.)

Any errors evident? Does that result in working sound?

1 Like
4

Thanks Deano_ferrari for your reply. I have nearly managed to get my sound working but I am not sure how or why. I played around with installing and uninstalling both pulseaudio and pipewire with reboots and something I did must have got it running. Not sure itā€™s correct so I will answer your questions and reshow the current configuration settings.

Only one headache remains but I probably need to start a new thread somewhere about it, I cannot get the bluetooth/sound connection to my hearing aids (which does pair OK with my laptop) to direct sound to my hearing aids. When paired, nothing shows up in the list of sound output devices for the hearing aids. Anyways here are my responses to your thoughts -

Gotcha! I have blown the YaST sound configuration module off of my systems and made a not not to use it.

Acknowledged

I have reran and re-posted the ALSA configuration report at
link to alsa configuration report.

> systemctl --user list-units | egrep -i "wire|pulse"
  pipewire-pulse.service  loaded active running   PipeWire PulseAudio
  pipewire.service        loaded active running   PipeWire Multimedia Service
  wireplumber.service     loaded active running   Multimedia Service Session Manager
  pipewire-pulse.socket   loaded active running   PipeWire PulseAudio
  pipewire.socket         loaded active running   PipeWire Multimedia System Sockets
5

The requested output confirms required services are now running as expected. (There should have been no need to reinstall pipewire though.) Glad to have been of guidance,

6

I think you meant me to use the following command, using your example fails syntax checks -

systemctl --user --now enable wireplumber pipewire.socket pipewire-pulse.socket

And I think this may have resolved this issue although I remain a bit uneasy for some reason. I didnā€™t realize I had to manually start and enable some services for the sound system and none of the documentation I read mentions this. Nor do I grok why these sound services are running in the user space. You can close this thread after your reply, if you like, and I will start a new one about my bluetooth hearing aids not connecting to the sound system.

7

Normally this would not have been needed, however the inxi ouput you shared showed that these user services were not running as expected,ā€¦and yes it should have been

systemctl --user --now enable wireplumber pipewire.socket pipewire-pulse.socket

Somehow I missed the ā€˜enableā€™ directive when posting originally.