[vox-tech] Ubuntu sound card issues on KDS laptop

[Eric Engelhard]

On Tue, Jan 16, 2007 at 12:11:07PM -0800, Harold Lee wrote:
> Eric Engelhard wrote:
[of sound card issues on a laptop with unknown hardware specs]

> Knowing the sound card model is more interesting than the laptop model, 
> try "lspci -v" and look for sound card info. e.g.
[snip]

The output of lspci -v is:
0000:00:08.0 Multimedia audio controller: ALi Corporation M5451 PCI AC-Link
Controller Audio Device (rev 01)
        Subsystem: Unknown device 168f:0001
        Flags: medium devsel, IRQ 10
        I/O ports at 1000 [size=256]
        Memory at ee801000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable)
	[size=4K]
      	Capabilities: <available only to root>

The ALSA site identifies the driver for this sound card as snd-ali5451.

Using the aadebug script from http://alsa.opensrc.org/Aadebug, I get the
following output:

ALSA Audio Debug v0.1.0 - Tue Jan 16 21:39:59 PST 2007
http://alsa.opensrc.org/index.php?page=aadebug
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.txt

Kernel ----------------------------------------------------
Linux rachel-laptop 2.6.15-27-386 #1 PREEMPT Fri Dec 8 17:51:56 UTC 2006 i686
GNU/Linux

Loaded Modules --------------------------------------------
snd_ali5451            24460  0
snd_ac97_codec         93216  1 snd_ali5451
snd_ac97_bus            2304  1 snd_ac97_codec
snd_pcm_oss            53664  0
snd_mixer_oss          18688  1 snd_pcm_oss
snd_pcm                89864  3 snd_ali5451,snd_ac97_codec,snd_pcm_oss
snd_timer              25220  1 snd_pcm
snd                    55268  6
snd_ali5451,snd_ac97_codec,snd_pcm_oss,snd_mixer_oss,snd_pcm,snd_timer
snd_page_alloc         10632  1 snd_pcm

Modprobe Conf ---------------------------------------------
Warning: module config file does not exist
This means any kernel modules will not be auto loaded
See your linux distro docs on how to create this file

Proc Asound -----------------------------------------------
Advanced Linux Sound Architecture Driver Version 1.0.10rc3 (Mon Nov 07
13:30:21 2005 UTC).
--- no soundcards ---
 33:       : timer

 Dev Snd ---------------------------------------------------
 timer

CPU -------------------------------------------------------
model name      : Pentium III (Coppermine)
cpu MHz         : 996.364

RAM -------------------------------------------------------
MemTotal:       508192 kB
SwapTotal:      827308 kB

Hardware --------------------------------------------------
0000:00:00.0 Host bridge: ALi Corporation M1621 (rev 01)
0000:00:08.0 Multimedia audio controller: ALi Corporation M5451 PCI AC-Link
Controller Audio Device (rev 01)

The modprobe conf issue may not be significant, because I get the very same
output from a laptop running the same distro (ubuntu 6.06) but having a
functional soundcard.

It appears that the correct driver is installed as a module, but that the card
is not being detected. Am I interpreting this correctly? If so, how would I
resolve a detection issue?

Eric