No audio from speakers in a DELL Latitude E6520

[Viandante]

Hi!

A friend of mine has a fresh Debian 6.0.6 install and we can't get the speakers to work.
If you put headphones in I can hear sounds, but as soon as you disconnect them speakers won't work.

I installed the ethernet drivers, the wifi ones, but I can't get audio to work.

I've got pulseaudio-utils, pulseaudio, gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg, libasound2-plugins, gnome-alsamixer packages installed.

I tried adding "options snd-hda-intel model=generic" in /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf file with no success.
I also tried "model=ideapad" and "model=thinkpad" without success.

I heard it can be solved by installing version 1.0.25 of alsa drivers, but I can't get them to work.
When I run ./configure, it tells me:

checking for kernel linux/version.h ... no
The file /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-amd64/source/include/INCLUDE_VERSION_H does not exist.
Please install the package with full kernel sources for your distribution
or use --with-kernel=dir option to specify another directory with kernel
sources (default is /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-amd64/source).

Installing kernel-package, linux-headers-2.6.32-5-amd64, linux-headers-2.6.32-5-common, module-init-tools doesn't change anything.

I think that if we can get these drivers to install we could solve this.

Any help would be appreciated!

[Miven]

Headphones work but the speakers don't? That's very odd. Could it be one of those Fn-key combos that control the speaker volume or mute outside of the OS scope? I know my laptop has Fn-key combos for all kinds of things like screen brightness, numlock, mute, etc that have nothing to do with the OS.

Another possibility is that the headphone jack is damaged and the contact doesn't return to its resting spot properly when you pull the headphones out. My headphone jack is inconveniently located right on the front where my elbows sit when I'm reading at the PC. I have had to take special care not to damage it. I even installed a special 'L' jack adapter for this reason. Have you ever heard the speakers work?

As for the alsa driver issue:

I believe that /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-amd64/source should be a symbolic link to /usr/src/linux-2.6.32-5-amd64/ or wherever the kernel source tree is located. At least it is on my 2.6.6 box. Perhaps the link was never made correctly at the install stage?

Peace and Cheer.

[Viandante]

Headphones work but the speakers don't? That's very odd. Could it be one of those Fn-key combos that control the speaker volume or mute outside of the OS scope? I know my laptop has Fn-key combos for all kinds of things like screen brightness, numlock, mute, etc that have nothing to do with the OS.

Another possibility is that the headphone jack is damaged and the contact doesn't return to its resting spot properly when you pull the headphones out. My headphone jack is inconveniently located right on the front where my elbows sit when I'm reading at the PC. I have had to take special care not to damage it. I even installed a special 'L' jack adapter for this reason. Have you ever heard the speakers work?

As for the alsa driver issue:

I believe that /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-amd64/source should be a symbolic link to /usr/src/linux-2.6.32-5-amd64/ or wherever the kernel source tree is located. At least it is on my 2.6.6 box. Perhaps the link was never made correctly at the install stage?

Peace and Cheer.

I tried all the fn-keys combos but nothing changed.
The speakers work, because it's a dual boot and on windows I can clearly hear sounds.

About the symlink I'll let you know as soon as I get my hands on that laptop again, later today.

Thanks for your time, let's hope we find out how to work this out!

[fenario]

Hi Viandante

Have you tried a comprehensive mixer, like alsamixer?
On my dell laptop the speakers are not directly switched over when disconnecting but rather gated; the settings for speaker and for headphones are separate controls. So your speaker can even be muted which you'd see in the mixer. I had similar starts but found it was just a control down or muted.
good luck
fen

[Viandante]

Ok, I went into /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-amd64 and source is a link:
source -> /usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.32-5-common

I changed the symlink to point to /usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.32-5-amd64 instead and it now configures, but when I run make I get:

make -C /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-amd64/build SUBDIRS=/home/USERNAME/Desktop/Downloads/alsa-driver-1.0.25   CPP="gcc  -E"  CC="gcc" modules
make[1]: Entering directory '/lib/modules/2.6.32-5-amd64/build'
make[1]: *** No rule to make target 'modules'.  Stop.
make[1]: Leaving directory '/lib/modules/2.6.32-5-amd64/build'
make: *** [compile] Error 2

I checked /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-amd64/build/ and it's empty.

I already have the packages for the headers, like build-essential and linux-headers-2.6.32-5-amd64. Am I missing something?

[Viandante]

Hi Viandante

Have you tried a comprehensive mixer, like alsamixer?
On my dell laptop the speakers are not directly switched over when disconnecting but rather gated; the settings for speaker and for headphones are separate controls. So your speaker can even be muted which you'd see in the mixer. I had similar starts but found it was just a control down or muted.
good luck
fen

I already tried alsamixer, and "Master" and "PCM" are already at 100%.

In the "Select sound card" window I get three choices:

- (default)
0 HDA Intel PCH
enter device name...

Switching to default and choice 0 make no difference.


I also tried reinstalling the headers packages I listed before with no luck: /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-amd64/build is still empty and make is still not working.