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

[Bill Davidsen]

Marko Vojinovic wrote:
> 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.
> 
All of my six (so far) systems using FC11 were clean installs, four from LiveCD, 
one from DVD, one from DVD image NFS mounted. Oh, and a test install from USB 
made from the snapshot DVD, on one of those machines later reinstalled.

Four of six had simple output to the laptop speakers work after install, the two 
  desktops had two channel from the sound card, no setting I've found will 
enable the other speakers from any source, even on hardware which had 5.1 with 
Windows and FC6.

> 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.
> 
Your point about upgrade is well taken, three of the six worked worse after 
upgrade from the install media to "current" using either yum (cli) or the update 
menu item. Go figure.

> 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
> 
> 


-- 
Bill Davidsen <davidsen at tmr.com>
   "We have more to fear from the bungling of the incompetent than from
the machinations of the wicked."  - from Slashdot