The alsa-utils alsasound init script does not initialise the sound card correctly in my Acer 5102WLMi laptop. At first I had it worked about 1 time out of 3. When it fails the sound module loads correctly (snd-hda-intel), but an error is reported when attempting to restore the sound levels. After this point the sound card will not function until the module is unloaded. OTOH if snd-hda-intel is modprobed (by hand), then alsamixer is run, then the levels are restored it works every time. I have "fixed" the alsasound init script for my laptop (diff follows). I believe this must be an upstream bug, but I'm filing it here JIC. Is there *any* reason that anyone knows about why a mixer needs to be run before an alsactl restore can be run (and if there is should the alsasound init script be doing this?). On the laptop alsactl essentially "breaks" the sound card when run before alsamixer (or amixer). Reproducible: Sometimes Steps to Reproduce: 1. Install gentoo 2. Install Alsa 3. Boot laptop
Which alsa-drivers and alsa-utils versions are you using?
Originally I was using the kernel drivers (gentoo-sources-2.6.18-r1), and alsa-utils-1.0.11. I upgraded to alsa-utils-1.0.14-rc1, and started using alsa-driver-1.0.14-rc1. There was no significant change between the kernel drivers, and alsa-driver, both behaved the same. The change I have made to /etc/init.d/alsasound to make it work follows. With this change it always works. I've restarted about 5 times now, and it's worked every time. Also, while I was trying to work out what was wrong, it was very repeatable; if amixer or alsamixer was run before alsactl (after modprobing snd-hda-intel) it would always work. If alsactl is run first it usually doesn't work. I tried a sleep timeout initially thinking it was a timing problem, but this made no difference. --- /etc/init.d/alsasound.old 2007-03-20 09:48:41.000000000 +1200 +++ /etc/init.d/alsasound 2007-03-19 12:46:12.000000000 +1200 @@ -171,6 +171,7 @@ } restore() { + /usr/bin/amixer info 0 ebegin "Restoring Mixer Levels" local val=0 For reference here's snippets out of my alsa config (although I don't think this is the problem): /etc/modules.d/alsa: options snd-hda-intel model=3stack # NOTE: I originally used model=acer position_fix=1, but changed it to 3stack while testing, it doesn't seem to make any difference to this problem. (http://gentoo-wiki.com/HARDWARE_Acer_Aspire_5102WLMi) alias snd-card-0 snd-hda-intel alias sound-slot-0 snd-hda-intel /etc/modules.autoload.d/kernel-2.6: battery ppp button fglrx snd-hda-intel # not necessary, also works when module isn't autoloaded (ie is loaded by alsasound init later)
I should also add, that when I was first trying to get sound working reliably I tried a few different kernel versions: linux-2.6.17-gentoo-r8 linux-2.6.18-gentoo-r1 linux-2.6.20-gentoo I came back to 2.6.18 from 2.6.20 because it seemed worse, chances are that it would now work with 2.6.20 (with the modded alsasound init script). I think there were other kernel versions earlier than 2.6.17, but they've been 'emerge -C'd by now.
Try alsa-driver-1.0.14_rc3 and alsa-utils-1.0.14_rc2-r3; if you still have problems, you should take this upstream...
Occasionally between kernel/driver releases, the format changes and it's not possible to restore the old values. If you upgrade to the latest alsa-lib/tools/util packages, and use the in-kernel sound drivers from the latest development kernel (currently v2.6.21-rc5), does the issue still exist?
See comment #5
