Updated recently - Soundblaster card no longer available in GUI

suse_rasputin · November 2, 2021, 6:00pm

Hi!

TW KDE installed in May on a Dell Precision, doing fine (including audio) until I did a zypper dup last week (Problem with pipewire-media-session, I chose to keep old version). Afterwards the audiocard was not available in the GUI (System Settings and widget in lower right corner), but in Yast -> Audio as well as in lspci:

https://paste.opensuse.org/1864551e

sudo lspci 
[sudo] password for root:  
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 5400 Chipset Memory Controller Hub (rev 20) 
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5400 Chipset PCI Express Port 1 (rev 20) 
00:05.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5400 Chipset PCI Express Port 5 (rev 20) 
00:09.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5400 Chipset PCI Express Port 9 (rev 20) 
00:10.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 5400 Chipset FSB Registers (rev 20) 
00:10.1 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 5400 Chipset FSB Registers (rev 20) 
00:10.2 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 5400 Chipset FSB Registers (rev 20) 
00:10.3 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 5400 Chipset FSB Registers (rev 20) 
00:10.4 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 5400 Chipset FSB Registers (rev 20) 
00:11.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 5400 Chipset CE/SF Registers (rev 20) 
00:15.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 5400 Chipset FBD Registers (rev 20) 
00:15.1 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 5400 Chipset FBD Registers (rev 20) 
00:16.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 5400 Chipset FBD Registers (rev 20) 
00:16.1 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 5400 Chipset FBD Registers (rev 20) 
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 631xESB/632xESB/3100 Chipset PCI Express Root Port 1 (rev 09) 
00:1d.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 631xESB/632xESB/3100 Chipset UHCI USB Controller #1 (rev 09) 
00:1d.1 USB controller: Intel Corporation 631xESB/632xESB/3100 Chipset UHCI USB Controller #2 (rev 09) 
00:1d.2 USB controller: Intel Corporation 631xESB/632xESB/3100 Chipset UHCI USB Controller #3 (rev 09) 
00:1d.3 USB controller: Intel Corporation 631xESB/632xESB/3100 Chipset UHCI USB Controller #4 (rev 09) 
00:1d.7 USB controller: Intel Corporation 631xESB/632xESB/3100 Chipset EHCI USB2 Controller (rev 09) 
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 PCI Bridge (rev d9) 
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 631xESB/632xESB/3100 Chipset LPC Interface Controller (rev 09) 
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 631xESB/632xESB IDE Controller (rev 09) 
00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation 631xESB/632xESB SATA AHCI Controller (rev 09) 
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 631xESB/632xESB/3100 Chipset SMBus Controller (rev 09) 
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Turks PRO [Radeon HD 7570] 
01:00.1 Audio device: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Turks HDMI Audio [Radeon HD 6500/6600 / 6700M Series] 
03:00.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 6311ESB/6321ESB PCI Express Upstream Port (rev 01) 
03:00.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 6311ESB/6321ESB PCI Express to PCI-X Bridge (rev 01) 
04:00.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 6311ESB/6321ESB PCI Express Downstream Port E1 (rev 01) 
04:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 6311ESB/6321ESB PCI Express Downstream Port E2 (rev 01) 
06:00.0 Multimedia video controller: Conexant Systems, Inc. CX23887/8 PCIe Broadcast Audio and Video Decoder with 3D Comb (rev 04) 
08:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Inc. and subsidiaries NetXtreme BCM5754 Gigabit Ethernet PCI Express (rev 02) 
09:02.0 Multimedia audio controller: Creative Labs EMU20k1 [Sound Blaster X-Fi Series] 
09:0a.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Texas Instruments TSB43AB22A IEEE-1394a-2000 Controller (PHY/Link) [iOHCI-Lynx]

OK, I thought, maybe better to update all including pipewire-media-session, which I did a few minutes ago (zypper dup, no problems this time), but nothing changed.

Needless to say that 15.3 on the same machine has no problems to detect or use the audio card.

Any ideas?

nrickert · November 2, 2021, 7:27pm

You can maybe try what others tried – switch all pipewire packages to the oss repo. I don’t know if it will work, but it is worth the try.

suse_rasputin · November 2, 2021, 8:24pm

Hi, many thanks for replying!

But didn’T change anything. Switched all packages to opensuse repo (yast) and rebooted afterwards. No change at all…

suse_rasputin · November 2, 2021, 8:45pm

https://forums.opensuse.org/showthread.php/561324-The-audio-stays-mute-and-I-can-t-change-it

…installed pulse audion, uninstalled pipewire-media-session, no changes…

suse_rasputin · November 3, 2021, 2:05pm

Is it an option to unistall pipewire completely? What to install instead? pulse?

susejunky · November 3, 2021, 2:45pm

A few days ago i ran into the problem with pipewire-media-session not being available on packman any longer.

I uninstalled pipewire except:

# zypper se -si pipewire

Loading repository data...
Reading installed packages...

S | Name              | Type    | Version    | Arch   | Repository
--+-------------------+---------+------------+--------+-------------------------------
i | libpipewire-0_3-0 | package | 0.3.39-2.1 | x86_64 | Packman openSUSE Tumbleweed AC
#

and installed pulseaudio again

# zypper se -si pulseaudio

Loading repository data...
Reading installed packages...

S | Name                       | Type    | Version  | Arch   | Repository
--+----------------------------+---------+----------+--------+------------------------
i | pulseaudio                 | package | 15.0-4.1 | x86_64 | openSUSE Tumbleweed Oss
i | pulseaudio-bash-completion | package | 15.0-4.1 | x86_64 | openSUSE Tumbleweed Oss
i | pulseaudio-lang            | package | 15.0-4.1 | noarch | openSUSE Tumbleweed Oss
i | pulseaudio-module-x11      | package | 15.0-4.1 | x86_64 | openSUSE Tumbleweed Oss
i | pulseaudio-utils           | package | 15.0-4.1 | x86_64 | openSUSE Tumbleweed Oss
i | pulseaudio-utils-32bit     | package | 15.0-4.1 | x86_64 | openSUSE Tumbleweed Oss
#

Now sound works fine again.

However my sound device is a snd_hda_intel. I don’t know whether you can do the same with a soundblaster card.

Regards

susejunky

suse_rasputin · November 3, 2021, 2:50pm

Hi and many thanks for your solution! Did you lock the pipewire packages so that they don’t get installed by samo pattern next time you do zypper dup?

susejunky · November 3, 2021, 5:26pm

I do not have any patterns installed on my system so i can’t really answer this question…

On the other hand if you do not want pipewire it should do no harm to lock it.

Regards

susejunky

suse_rasputin · November 3, 2021, 7:10pm

Had a look at my plain vanilla TW KDE, lots of patterns. How did you remove them?

susejunky · November 3, 2021, 8:41pm

There were several steps involved (not all of them necessary to get rid of patterns).

Beware! I do not recommend to follow what i will describe below. It may not render the results you expect and it may cause quite some work to get (and to keep) the system you would like to have.

That said here is what i did:

While still in the installer i disabled the installation of recommended packages.
After the first reboot i again disabled the installation of recommended packages in yast
(because- when i recall correctly - it was not taken over from the installation process). 1. I created the file /etc/zypper/locks
with```
type: package
match_type: regex
case_sensitive: on
solvable_name: ^patterns-*
comment:

 
  1. I removed the few patterns installed during the installation process. 
  1. Finally i did a **zypper dup**
 to get the latest updates. 


Only step 3 and 4 should be necessary to get rid of patterns.

Again: To use a system installed that way requires "a certain awareness".

On the other hand it saves roughly one third of packages compared to an installation with recommended packages. Considering Tumbleweeds frequent (and sometimes extensive) updates this safes bandwidth and time.

Regards

susejunky

suse_rasputin · November 10, 2021, 5:35pm

susejunky:

A few days ago i ran into the problem with pipewire-media-session not being available on packman any longer.

I uninstalled pipewire except:

# zypper se -si pipewire

Loading repository data...
Reading installed packages...

S | Name              | Type    | Version    | Arch   | Repository
--+-------------------+---------+------------+--------+-------------------------------
i | libpipewire-0_3-0 | package | 0.3.39-2.1 | x86_64 | Packman openSUSE Tumbleweed AC
#

and installed pulseaudio again

# zypper se -si pulseaudio

Loading repository data...
Reading installed packages...

S | Name                       | Type    | Version  | Arch   | Repository
--+----------------------------+---------+----------+--------+------------------------
i | pulseaudio                 | package | 15.0-4.1 | x86_64 | openSUSE Tumbleweed Oss
i | pulseaudio-bash-completion | package | 15.0-4.1 | x86_64 | openSUSE Tumbleweed Oss
i | pulseaudio-lang            | package | 15.0-4.1 | noarch | openSUSE Tumbleweed Oss
i | pulseaudio-module-x11      | package | 15.0-4.1 | x86_64 | openSUSE Tumbleweed Oss
i | pulseaudio-utils           | package | 15.0-4.1 | x86_64 | openSUSE Tumbleweed Oss
i | pulseaudio-utils-32bit     | package | 15.0-4.1 | x86_64 | openSUSE Tumbleweed Oss
#

Now sound works fine again.

However my sound device is a snd_hda_intel. I don’t know whether you can do the same with a soundblaster card.

Regards

susejunky

Did exactly that but audio card did not come back in GUI… Further ideas anyone?

suse_rasputin · November 15, 2021, 3:09pm

FTR

https://forums.opensuse.org/showthread.php/562430-Sound-stopped-working

https://forums.opensuse.org/showthread.php/562232-audio-gone-after-update-to-tumbleweed-20211107

it’s a mess and apparently nobody cares.

oldcpu · November 16, 2021, 5:50am

Can you run a diagnostic script to provide more information as to both your current hardware and software setup for audio? You can do that by opening a bash shell (konsole or xterm) and as a regular user with PC connected to the Internet, send the following command:


/usr/sbin/alsa-info.sh

When prompted, select the upload/share option. Let the script run to completion. When it completes, look at the bash shell, and you should see a URL-address where the output of the diagnostic script was uploaded. Please share that URL-address here. We can look at it and see if it yields any hints as to the problem.

suse_rasputin · November 16, 2021, 9:15am

Hi!

Here comes the link…

http://alsa-project.org/db/?f=67349e31b4b367d80b5569581884b790aa5f638e

suse_rasputin · November 16, 2021, 9:35am

btw I found 3 other TW KDE installs that “forgot” their sound cards after recent “zypper dup”. But let’s focus on this machine (see output of script above), as I don’T use audio that much on the other systems (although it’s annoying to get your hardware canceled by updating the OS)…

susejunky · November 16, 2021, 10:59am

If you do (in a console as a user not “root”)

alsamixer

and press F6 is the card displayed in the dropdown list?

If so can you select it?

Regards

susejunky

suse_rasputin · November 16, 2021, 11:17am

This is what I get:

https://paste.opensuse.org/c74135bd

oldcpu · November 16, 2021, 11:45am

Some things I note:




Manufacturer:      Dell Inc.
Product Name:      Precision WorkStation T7400 
....
!!Loaded ALSA modules
!!-------------------

snd_ctxfi (card 0)
snd_hda_intel (card 1)
cx23885 (card 2)
...
!!Soundcards recognised by ALSA
!!-----------------------------

 0 [XFi            ]: SB-XFi - Creative X-Fi
                      Creative X-Fi 20K1 Unknown
 1 [HDMI           ]: HDA-Intel - HDA ATI HDMI
                      HDA ATI HDMI at 0xfbedc000 irq 32
 2 [CX23885        ]: CX23885 - Conexant CX23885
                      Conexant CX23885 at cx23885[0]
....
!!Aplay/Arecord output
!!--------------------

APLAY

aplay: device_list:274: no soundcards found...

ARECORD

arecord: device_list:274: no soundcards found...
...

!!Amixer output
!!-------------

!!-------Mixer controls for card XFi

Invalid card number 'XFi'.
Invalid card number 'XFi'.

!!-------Mixer controls for card HDMI

Invalid card number 'HDMI'.
Invalid card number 'HDMI'.

!!-------Mixer controls for card CX23885

Invalid card number 'CX23885'.
Invalid card number 'CX23885'.
.....

You note sound works before an update … ??

Hmmm … is there any chance you had alsa-firmware or kernel-firmware or kernel-firmware-sound installed before and they were removed?

suse_rasputin · November 16, 2021, 2:24pm

Hi!

I had this pipewire installed and sound worked for months. Then there was this conflicht with pipewire-media-session as described in OP and since then no luck to regain sound by switching to pulse, as described in this thread…

susejunky · November 16, 2021, 3:45pm

I don’t know if this is of any use to you but

You could upgrade your openSUSE Tumbleweed to 20211111 that would give you Kernel 5.14.14-2-default and ALSA driver version k5.14.14-2-default.

When i run /usr/sbin/alsa-info.sh the package list at the very end of the output looks like this

!!Packages installed
!!--------------------

alsa-plugins-1.2.5-1.2.x86_64
alsa-plugins-pulse-32bit-1.2.5-1.2.x86_64
alsa-plugins-speexrate-1.2.5-1.2.x86_64
alsa-plugins-upmix-1.2.5-1.2.x86_64
alsa-ucm-conf-1.2.5.1-1.2.noarch
alsa-utils-1.2.5.1-3.1.x86_64

while yours looks like this

!!Packages installed
!!--------------------

alsa-oss-1.1.8-4.2.x86_64
alsa-plugins-1.2.5-1.2.x86_64
alsa-plugins-pulse-1.2.5-1.2.x86_64
alsa-plugins-speexrate-1.2.5-1.2.x86_64
alsa-plugins-upmix-1.2.5-1.2.x86_64
alsa-ucm-conf-1.2.5.1-1.2.noarch
alsa-utils-1.2.5.1-3.1.x86_64

However my system is different to yours (no soundblaster but HDA Intel PCH).

Regards

susejunky