Soundcard autodetection fails in 3.8... but works in 3.7?

[Junkster]

Soundcard: Creative SB AWE64

Clean boot with a P3-500, no cheatcodes -- under 3.8 the soundcard is simply NOT DETECTED.

What can I output from 3.7 and 3.8 that would help figure out what's changed here?

I take it this is not normal.. or has there been a change in HW detection?

Any help much appreciated.. thanks

[vampirefo]

I am new to knoppix just got it today I ran a test on it and test says this kernel doesn't include sound.[/img]

[Markus]

I just installed knoppix 3.8 cebit just to test it and all I had to do to get sound to work with xmms was to fire up aumix and pump up the volume.
I used as bootstring: knoppix lang=us screen=1280x1024 vga=normal alsa=intel8x0

[Junkster]

Thanks for the effort, but even with additional parameters (even with alsa=sbawe), the new distro does not detect my sound.

The problem -- or perhaps curiosity -- is that there was no need for any boot params whatsoever in 3.7 and the whole system (including sound) booted up perfectly. Now I'm looking at rebuilding the kernel, modules, special drivers, even remastering knoppix... all these seemingly unnecessary steps just because I'm not able to get a straight answer: what's changed in the way 3.8 and 3.7 boots that the soundcard detection now fails?

Is it easier to get UnionFS to work in 3.7?

Thanks anyway

[Markus]

mmh, I didn't actually make the install just for this problem ;)

Anyway, have you tried the emu10k driver instead?

[Junkster]

mmh, I didn't actually make the install just for this problem ;)

Anyway, have you tried the emu10k driver instead?

I haven't tried adding alsa=emul10k to the boot prompt, but right after I post this, I will... however, this still does not answer the basic question -- what has changed in the boot sequence to have a very basic, standard, non-emulated ISA card to not be detected under the new distro, but works perfectly fine with 3.7?

I don't understand this in the slightest... I'd love to get this to work, but the mechanics of the solution for this "bug" are less a priority than figuring out what brought it on in the first place.

[Junkster]

I haven't tried adding alsa=emul10k to the boot prompt, but right after I post this, I will...

ok, well, nothing has happened with the extra (correct) alsa=emu10k param

I did a little digging and pnpdump is seemingly able to identify the card.. I just don't quite know where to go from there


Board 1 has Identity 59 1f 0d 2c 0b e4 00 8c 0e: CTL00e4 Serial no 520956939 [checksum 59]

[Markus]

Hmm, hard to say 'cause I don't have a SB. One possibility would be that something is now supported, like a webcam, that takes over as the sound device while usb hotplugs the modules later.
How far is it detected?
lspci -v (check the irq)
cat /proc/asound/cards
dmesg (any errors on the card?)

[Junkster]

Hmm, hard to say 'cause I don't have a SB. One possibility would be that something is now supported, like a webcam, that takes over as the sound device while usb hotplugs the modules later.
How far is it detected?
lspci -v (check the irq)
cat /proc/asound/cards
dmesg (any errors on the card?)

Well the lspci -v doesn't result in much as it's an ISA card.. I could post up some values just for completeness.

lspnp also spits out quite a list, but the awe64 is not there either...

Other components on the system include: 2 HDD, 1 CDRW, 1 DVDR, an AGP Nvidia board, a PCI intel 10/100 ether, and that's it. everything else is detected.. np... when I switch the bios out of pnp, the audio gets irq5 according to preboot but is still not detected post bootlaunch ... incidentally, IRQ5 is not used in lspnp or lspci, regardless of toggle BIOS pnp support.

cat /proc/asound/cards reports "--- no soundcards ---"

dunno even what I'm looking for in dmesg.. but nothing shows up glaringly obviously all-caps-style "wrong"

This is terribly disconcerting as I chose an ISA card the the specific reason that it's [presumably] more dependable than PCI.. but now with the module itself MIA, this has left me wondering if I should even bother getting comfy with this distro as things will inevitably change for either better or worse next release.. and it's even a real soundblaster... I remember back when that actually meant something!

Thanks again for the reply on this one

[Markus]

One more thing to try is deselecting any onboard sound and pnp in BIOS and adding the cheatcode pci=biosirq

Try to modprobe the module if lsmod shows nothing appropriate, or run modconf to do it.

Getting out of ideas really, and you're correct about the fact that an ISA card should work.

[Junkster]

One more thing to try is deselecting any onboard sound and pnp in BIOS and adding the cheatcode pci=biosirq

Try to modprobe the module if lsmod shows nothing appropriate, or run modconf to do it.

Getting out of ideas really, and you're correct about the fact that an ISA card should work.

Hey holy crap we've made some headway here! okay... the short answer is that I now have sound again.

The long answer is the following: I did the modconf as suggested, enabled sbawe drivers and oss, adjusted the volumes, and voila -- wave output. midi still doesn't work, but I figure it's some other library that needs installation.

For diagnostic reasons, I rebooted, re-eneabled all the PNP stuff, ran modconf and enabled the same libraries, and still got wave (only, not midi) output. So it looks as this little conundrum has been resolved. 2 questions:

1) how do I enable MIDI... which modconf libraries would be required? opl3?
2) why did this work ok in 3.7 and requires manual settings in 3.8?

Thanks a million...

[Markus]

Glad you got sound and sorry that I can't answer the questions;
1) I don't have a midi device and have read that many people have problems with midi in knoppix. I've only used timidity to play midi.
2) Didn't use 3.7 much, just booted the CD ~4 times. You might want to check if the blacklist is changed for audio devices between 3.7 and 3.8.

[Junkster]

2) Didn't use 3.7 much, just booted the CD ~4 times. You might want to check if the blacklist is changed for audio devices between 3.7 and 3.8.

Where might this blacklist of hardware be found? Under /etc/hotplug ?

But then again, wouldn't blacklisting an ISA card be like allowing 1.44M 3½ floppies, but NOT older 720k's?

TIA again

[Markus]

Where might this blacklist of hardware be found? Under /etc/hotplug ? Yes, especially /etc/hotplug/blacklist.d/alsa-base


But then again, wouldn't blacklisting an ISA card be like allowing 1.44M 3½ floppies, but NOT older 720k's? Well you wanted to know what's changed between 3.7 and 3.8 and this is a possibility. Besides the way I've understood blacklisting is that it stops hotplug from loading the modules before the devicedriver itself claims them, so you might want to check that the modules ARE in the blacklist.

[jdebay]

Yes, I am like you in away...

I was using 3.4 and decide to give 3.8 cebit-2005 a try.

on boot line on 3.4 with 2.6 put "alsa=cm8738" this does not work with 3.8.

Did not put on boot line and 3.8 found cm8738. brought up mixer and change volumes, so now have 3 out of 5 speaker system working. I know this does not help you. Now looking for a mixer to set 4 channel sound.

[rick_the_nick]

Team,
I searched through this topic and also on other topics under "Hardware and Booting", and the trick of running "alsaconf" in a root terminal does actually work to detect soundcards and activate sound output.
However, the issue remains: I also used to run a Knoppix 3.7.x series CD, and sound worked perfectly in a variety of desktop and laptop machines with different sound HW without any cheats at all. After I switched to 3.8.x, I need to run alsaconf every time I boot from the CD to get sound.
Something was broken along the lines, in the move to 3.8, that totally broke sound at from boot time. I also tried several cheats, like acpi=force, alsa=driver, pnpbios=off, etc, and nothing worked for me.
Any clues if this could be fixed in, say, 3.8.3, or 3.9.x ?

Regards,

Ricardo