[SOLVED] Ubuntu 9.04 sound problems

[mrs1179]

I'm new to Linux and have not been able to get my sound to work. I have a 5-year old Gateway 4520GZ laptop and have installed Ubuntu 9.04. I have Googled for similar sound issues, and found a link with helpful information at help.ubuntu.com/community/SoundTroubleshooting. I have worked through the steps, but have been unable to find a solution. There were a couple of points in the document where my troubleshooting found problems, but I could not determine a solution. Stepping through the document, I did the following:

The results of "aplay -l" are:
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: I82801DBICH4 [Intel 82801DB-ICH4], device 0: Intel ICH [Intel 82801DB-ICH4]
Subdevices: 0/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: I82801DBICH4 [Intel 82801DB-ICH4], device 4: Intel ICH - IEC958 [Intel 82801DB-ICH4 - IEC958]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

When I run "sudo aptitude install linux-ubuntu--modules-`uname -r` linux-generic", it looks like it does not install anything, because I get this message:
Couldn't find any package whose name or description matched "linux-ubuntu--modules-2.6.28-11-generic"

The result of "lspci -v" says that my Kernel module is snd-intel8xo.

My ALSA information is downloaded to www dot alsa-project.org/db/?f=56...77816f3616b973 (by forum rules, I'm not allowed to post actual URLs yet).

When I look for Codec information, I do not see anything that looks like what is in the SoundTroubleshooting document. I see a section called "AC97 Codec Information" , but there is no line titled "Codec:"

At this point, I'm not sure where to proceed. I could use some guidance from someone more experienced than me.

I did find a paragraph near the end of the SoundTroubleshooting document from webbca01 that sounds promising. It references adding options to alsa-base.conf for the snd-intel8xo.

I tried his solution and added this: "options snd-intel8x0 ac97_quirk=3", but it did not do anything.

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

[kmitnick]

linux-ubuntu--modules-`uname -r`

before modules I assume it is - not --
or try this

sudo apt-cache search linux-ubuntu-modules

it is a search tool for packages so if there is a possible match then it will generate a list with packages' names.

[mrs1179]

Yes, you are correct regarding the syntax. I also ran the command with the correct syntax and got the same result.

I ran the command you suggested

sudo apt-cache search linux-ubuntu-modules

and these are the results:

mark@mark-Linux-laptop:~$ sudo apt-cache search linux-ubuntu-modules
linux-wlan-ng - utilities for wireless prism2 cards
aufs-source - Source for the aufs driver
linux-wlan-ng-source - linux-wlan-ng driver
lirc-modules-source - infra-red remote control support - kernel modules
lms - OpenAMT Local Manageability Service
mark@mark-Linux-laptop:~$

What does this indicate?

[kmitnick]

these are list of available packages to be installed, but I don't see what you need, for ex the first and third packages are for wireless cards, why do u need the that package "linux-ubuntu-modules"???
may be you need the kernel headers

sudo apt-get install linux-headers-`uname -r `

waiting for your reply

[mrs1179]

I was attempting to load the package "linux-ubuntu-modules" while following the SoundTroubleshooting guide. One of the first steps was to run this command:

"sudo aptitude install linux-ubuntu-modules-`uname -r` linux-generic"

Since it gave me the message:

Couldn't find any package whose name or description matched "linux-ubuntu-modules-2.6.28-11-generic"

I thought that perhaps that meant that it failed to find and load a package I may need to run sound.

Anyway, here is the result of the command you suggested:

mark@mark-Linux-laptop:~$ sudo apt-get install linux-headers-`uname -r `
[sudo] password for mark:
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
linux-headers-2.6.28-11-generic is already the newest version.
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 1 not upgraded.
mark@mark-Linux-laptop:~$

[kmitnick]

try

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

but about the linux-ubuntu-modules-`uname -r `
I don't know actually , can u give me the link for the guide your are following???

[mrs1179]

I ran these commands:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

but the only thing it found an update for was Wine.

The document I have followed is located at:
help.ubuntu.com/community/SoundTroubleshooting

[kmitnick]

I quote from the document you are following

Open a terminal window, and type "find /lib/modules/`uname -r` | grep snd". You should see a whole list of items come up. If you don't, it means that the upgrade process missed installing the kernel modules for sound. To fix this, type this at the command line:

sudo aptitude install linux-ubuntu-modules-`uname -r` linux-generic

so before you try to install it did you look for it in /lib/modules/`uname -r`???

[mrs1179]

I'm not sure what is included in "linux-generic", so I don't know if /lib/modules/2.6.28-11-generic/ has what it is supposed to have. Because I am new to linux and unfamiliar with the setup, I am somewhat blindly following the SoundTroubleshooting document, hoping to learn what I'm doing along the way.

This is the contents of /lib/modules/2.6.28-11-generic/

mark@mark-Linux-laptop:/lib/modules/2.6.28-11-generic$ ls -al
total 2868
drwxr-xr-x 6 root root 4096 2009-05-24 12:48 .
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 2009-05-19 12:44 ..
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 40 2009-05-13 20:56 build -> /usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.28-11-generic
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2009-05-19 21:21 initrd
drwxr-xr-x 10 root root 4096 2009-04-20 09:01 kernel
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 443724 2009-05-24 12:48 modules.alias
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 432541 2009-05-24 12:48 modules.alias.bin
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 69 2009-05-24 12:48 modules.ccwmap
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 213842 2009-05-24 12:48 modules.dep
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 318288 2009-05-24 12:48 modules.dep.bin
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 887 2009-05-24 12:48 modules.ieee1394map
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 218 2009-05-24 12:48 modules.inputmap
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 23368 2009-05-24 12:48 modules.isapnpmap
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 74 2009-05-24 12:48 modules.ofmap
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 83399 2009-04-16 22:41 modules.order
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 290025 2009-05-24 12:48 modules.pcimap
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1555 2009-05-24 12:48 modules.seriomap
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 172135 2009-05-24 12:48 modules.symbols
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 225130 2009-05-24 12:48 modules.symbols.bin
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 636042 2009-05-24 12:48 modules.usbmap
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 2009-05-24 12:47 updates
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 360 2009-05-24 12:34 volatile
mark@mark-Linux-laptop:/lib/modules/2.6.28-11-generic$

[mrs1179]

I appreciate that you took the time to respond to my request for help. I was finally able to determine a solution. It was a combination of things I gleaned from multiple sources. The Ubuntu SoundTroubleShooting document clued me into the fact that ac97_quirk options exist for the snd-intel8x0 driver.

This link on the alsa-project.org site gave me some code to add to my alsa-base.conf file. I can't post the actual URL, but replace the "dot" below with "." to get it.

]www dot alsa-project.org/main/index.php/Matrix:Module-ad1816a

It instructed to add the following code to /etc/modules.conf. Unfortunately, the modules.conf file does not exist in my installation of Ubuntu 9.04. I was able to find that it should now go into /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf. Following the document, I replaced the existing code with this:

# ALSA portion
alias snd-card-0 snd-hda-intel
alias snd-card-1 snd-cmipci
options snd-cmipci id="first" mpu_port=0x330

But this did not solve my problem. I had to add the proper ac97_quirk option for my snd-intel8x0 driver. There were multiple ac97_quirk options, so I had to painstakingly try each one, rebooting after each to ensure the options got loaded.

options snd-intel8x0 ac97_quirk=inv_eapd

This did the trick!