Alsa breaks TC7RC1?

[flyingfishfinger]

Hi,
A question (or possibly a bug) about Alsa on the new TC 7.0 RC1 - feel free to move this if it could go into a better place please!
Anyway, I installed alsa-config as I had before in 6.x. It didn't load automatically so I put the "alsasound start" into bootlocal.sh. However, this fails on boot resulting in a complete system hang up needing a hard reboot.
I can't even post a dmesg because it's not possible to even get to a prompt if I restore that bootlocal.sh; I also don't actually know how to edit it (to remove the offending line) when I do a norestore, as it's not loaded in that case!
Is this known behaviour or has anything similar been observed?

R

[Juanito]

You usually don't need the alsa-config extension - the alsa extension should be enough, did you try it without alsa-config?

Note that with my hardware, alsa assigns hdmi sound as the default, so in tc-7.x (but not tc-6.x) I need to load Xorg-7.7 for sound to work, even if I use the non-hdmi sound output.

[Rich]

Hi flyingfishfinger

I can't even post a dmesg because it's not possible to even get to a prompt if I restore that bootlocal.sh; I also don't actually know how to edit it (to remove the offending line) when I do a norestore, as it's not loaded in that case!
Is this known behaviour or has anything similar been observed?

Try booting  base norestore. Rename the  alsa  extension, then reboot. That should stop  alsa  from being loaded
and allow you to edit  bootlocal.sh.

[flyingfishfinger]

You usually don't need the alsa-config extension - the alsa extension should be enough, did you try it without alsa-config?

No sound without alsa-config, either in TC6 or TC7. Note that I only succeeded in loading alsa-config once without a crash, but it still gave me error messages. The last ones of which are "rmmod: can't unload module snd: Resource temporarily unavailable / busy " (can't remember which). That scrolled off the screen of my terminal, then hung. I think there were a few messages before these, but I couldn't go back to see them because of the hang. Note that this was after I already had a desktop, but the same happens on boot.

I did manage to remove it from onboot, thanks @Rich.

R

[Juanito]

What sound hardware do you have?

When you say that there's no sound without alsa-config - did you use alsamixer to un-mute the master volume? How did you test if sound worked?

With most modern hardware, when the alsa extension is loaded , the required kernel modules will be loaded automatically - if you got the "rmmod: can't unload module snd" message, it looks like you loaded alsa-config and started alsasound?

Lastly, did you update the alsa extensions when you updated to tc-7.x?

[flyingfishfinger]

Let's see. My HW is an Intel HD Audio with AD1984 codec.
I say "no sound with alsa-config" because I haven't been able to get it to load without crashing the machine. The one time it did load without crashing, I got sound. And unmuting alsa with alsamixer doesn't give me sound, no. I was attempting to play youtube videos with Firefox, that usually works (at least it did in TC6).
Let me reload them; I'm pretty sure I deleted and re-downloaded alsa when I updated though

R

[Juanito]

If you have intel hd audio, it's possible that you have the same problems I have.

It might be a good idea to boot to the console (boot code "text") and try the following:

* load the alsa extension without loading alsa-config
* look at the output of "aplay -l" to check that hdmi is not the default
* use alsamixer to un-mute the master volume and mute the headphones volume

..then "startx" and use something simpler than firefox to check your sound - for example xmms (use <ctrl-p> to configure it for alsa).

[flyingfishfinger]

Just downloaded a random wav file and tried with aplay, I get this error:

ALSA lib conf.c:3544:(snd_config_hook_load) cannot stat file/directory /usr/local/etc/alsa/cards/aliases.conf
ALSA lib pcm.c:2266:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.default
aplay: main:722: audio open error: No such file or directory

There's no speaker-test with the plain alsa.tcz, I think.

Will try your suggestions shortly,

R

[Juanito]

One other thing you could try is to modify the alsa-config extension dep file locally and delete "alsa.tcz" from it.

This will allow you to load alsa-config without first loading alsa. Once alsa-config is loaded, you can then load alsa and see if that improves things.

[flyingfishfinger]

Ok, works!. I removed alsa.tcz from alsa-config.tcz.dep; but then I added it as a separate onboot item. I didn't check if it was just a matter of updating the extensions, but still no sound without alsac-config.
Anyway, thanks for the suggestions, I have sound now.
Is there a way to unmute alsamixer in bootlocal? I didn't see a way to control it without the ncurses "GUI". I actually seem to require both that AND  "amixer set Master unmute".

R

[Juanito]

Once you have sound setup to your liking, you can use "sudo alsactl store" and add /usr/local/etc/alsa/asound.state to your backup.