From the top... how do I get sound working in F11 ?

[Marko Vojinovic]

On Saturday 25 July 2009 01:48:05 Jeff Spaleta wrote:
> I will say that in this case..that a fresh install would be extremely
> advisable. Following lots of well-meaning troubleshooting from lots of
> different people for days and weeks to solve the same problem ends up
> leaving your system in a very strange state.

Precisely!

I haven't checked it first-hand, but I do have a hunch that people who 
experience problems with sound are mainly the people who did an upgrade from 
F10, while previously fiddled with F10 configuration in order to get the sound 
working.

While people on the list may or may not know what settings you have fiddled 
around while troubleshooting, anaconda *definitely* cannot handle such 
strangely configured systems while upgrading. AFAIK, it assumes a more-or-less 
default F10 installation, where under-the-hood things haven't been customized 
beyond some sane level.

So the first thing I would ask when troubleshooting F11 audio problems is "did 
you do an upgrade from F10?" and if yes, "was PA working for you out-of-the-
box in F10?". This is just a hunch, but I bet 90% of people with problems 
would fail to answer yes to the latter question. In that case, the only sane 
thing to assume is that their system had broken configuration to begin with, 
when upgrading to F11. And anaconda tries to *keep* any custom-configured 
things in the system (which is the whole point of upgrading), and thus create 
even more problems.

There is a simple test to these kind of situations --- boot off a F11 Live CD, 
check all mixer levels, and see if sound works out-of-the-box. If it does, 
you've been bitten by your own previous configuration settings, and I would 
advise a reformat and clean install of F11. If it doesn't, *then* try to 
troubleshoot and whine on the list, while remembering that it is not 
pulseaudio that is always the culprit. I have seen more bugs boiling down to 
problems with alsa or userspace apps than problems with pa. The presence of pa 
on the system mainly just reveals bugs of other components.

HTH.

Best, :-)
Marko