[rhn-users] Audio problem when upgrading Red Hat Enterprise 3

[Nicolas Castagné]

Hi all...
As evidence, the suggestion you made Michael 
concerning the alsa drivers is interesting. But I 
did not succeed. Here are the results of all the 
tests tests I have made since yesterday, 
following the advices of various pple.

>  1) Let's look at the state of Alsa and find out what's going on:
>
>  cat /proc/asound/version
>  cat /proc/asound/cards
None of these file are on the system.
The rep /proc/asound does not exist.

Note that it DOES exist on the machine that was not yet updated - on which
audio works fine.


>  2) What modules did you want loaded?
% cat /etc/modprobe.conf
This file does not exist either.
Note that it does NOT exist on the machine  that was not yet updated - on
which audio works fine.
I have a module.conf instead - dunno if it corresponds in any way... Here
it is :

% ls /etc/module.conf
alias scsi_hostadapter ata_piix
alias eth0 e1000
pre-remove sound-slot-0 /bin/aumix-minimal -f 
/etc/.aumixrc -S >/dev/null 2>&1 || :
alias usb-controller usb-uhci
alias usb-controller1 ehci-hcd
# Turn off mcdx modules
alias block-major-20 off
alias sound-slot-0 snd-card-0
alias char-major-116 snd
alias snd-card-0 snd-intel8x0
alias char-major-14 soundcore
alias sound-slot-0 snd-card-0
alias sound-service-0-0 snd-mixer-oss
alias sound-service-0-1 snd-seq-oss
alias sound-service-0-3 snd-pcm-oss
alias sound-service-0-8 snd-seq-oss
alias sound-service-0-12 snd-pcm-oss
post-install snd-card-0 /usr/sbin/alsactl restore >/dev/null 2>&1 || :
pre-remove snd-card-0 /usr/sbin/alsactl store >/dev/null 2>&1 || :
alias char-major-195 nvidia



>  3) What modules are loaded?
% lsmod
Module                  Size  Used by    Tainted: P
soundcore               6436   0  (autoclean)
agpgart                57752   3  (autoclean)
nvidia               2127808  16  (autoclean)
usbserial              23580   0  (autoclean) (unused)
parport_pc             18756   1  (autoclean)
lp                      8964   0  (autoclean)
parport                36832   1  (autoclean) [parport_pc lp]
autofs4                15928   0  (autoclean) (unused)
e1000                  77116   1
floppy                 56656   0  (autoclean)
sg                     36204   0  (autoclean)
sr_mod                 17784   0  (autoclean)
microcode               5688   0  (autoclean)
ide-scsi               12336   0
ide-cd                 33920   0
cdrom                  32416   0  [sr_mod ide-cd]
loop                   11960   0  (autoclean)
lvm-mod                64512   0
keybdev                 2944   0  (unused)
mousedev                5524   2
hid                    22116   0  (unused)
input                   5888   0  [keybdev mousedev hid]
ehci-hcd               20008   0  (unused)
usb-uhci               25740   0  (unused)
usbcore                77376   1  [usbserial hid ehci-hcd usb-uhci]
ext3                   85704   2
jbd                    50572   2  [ext3]
ata_piix                5032   0  (unused)
libata                 38932   0  [ata_piix]
sd_mod                 13712   0  (unused)
scsi_mod              106408   5  [sg sr_mod ide-scsi ata_piix libata sd_mod]



>  4) What sound hardware is really in your system?
% lspci -vv
(only the audio controler)
00:1f.5 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corp. 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R)
AC'97 Audio Controller (rev 02)
         Subsystem: Dell: Unknown device 0156
         Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop-
ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B-
         Status: Cap+ 66Mhz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=medium >TAbort-
<TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR-
         Latency: 0
         Interrupt: pin B routed to IRQ 10
         Region 0: I/O ports at ee00 [size=256]
         Region 1: I/O ports at edc0 [size=64]
         Region 2: Memory at febffa00 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=512]
         Region 3: Memory at febff900 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=256]
         Capabilities: [50] Power Management version 2
                 Flags: PMEClk- DSI- D1- D2- AuxCurrent=375mA
PME(D0+,D1-,D2-,D3hot+,D3cold+)
                 Status: D0 PME-Enable- DSel=0 DScale=0 PME-

That's stange... According to Dell, it should be an Analog Device
AD1980-AC97 ...


Finally, executing more /var/log/messages results in (extract) :

>modprobe: modprobe: Can't locate module sound-slot-0
>modprobe: modprobe: Can't locate module sound-service-0-3
>modprobe: modprobe: Can't locate module sound-slot-0
>mmodprobe: modprobe: Can't locate module sound-service-0-3
>mmodprobe: modprobe: Can't locate module sound-slot-0
>mmodprobe: modprobe: Can't locate module sound-service-0-3


That's all for now ! Thx for your help.
Nicolas



>Nicolas,
>
>   I recently had a similar problem with my Dell Precision systems.
>If I recall correctly, what happens is that RedHat's dev RPM wipes
>out the the ALSA system symlinks that Dell uses (at least that's what
>happened in my case).
>
>   If it's what I think it is, make sure that this symlink is
>present on your Dell machine (assuming that you're using the
>ALSA sound drivers supplied by Dell):
>
>    /dev/snd -> /proc/asound/dev
>
>   Hope this helps,
>
>   Michael Durket

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Dr Nicolas CASTAGNE

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