you mean ChaintechAV7, right?



i don't mind switching back and forth.. i'd like to see that sorted out in KM



so i should run the realtek installer, then download the oss driver and reinstall it? i'll try that a bit later today! (before i go and mess around with the BIOS and HD audio!)

Yes, the Chaintech AV-710.

If the realtek driver includes an OSS compatibility option, compile and install it and see if that works. There were some mixer-related drivers that you seemed to have lost after installing the Realtek driver before. Maybe you need them?

_________________
KnoppMyth R5.5
MythiC Dragon v2.0
Join the KnoppMyth Frappr!

which ones? and what do you mean by an oss compatibility option? (pardon my ignorance please!)

OSS and ALSA are two different ways of doing sound on Linux. OSS is older and widely supported. ALSA is better designed but is not absolutely better in all areas.

If you look at the driver list you posted before and after you installed the Realtek drivers in KnoppMyth, as well as comparing Fedora to the post-Realtek KnoppMyth, you'll see several drivers that had 'oss' in them that no longer appeared after the new drivers for your device were installed and built. Check the documentation for the Realtek drivers to see if it allows you to build them with oss support. I don't know that this is the reason you get no sound, but it's certainly a difference between the working and nonworking state.

_________________
KnoppMyth R5.5
MythiC Dragon v2.0
Join the KnoppMyth Frappr!

i'll check that out. when installing alsa one can run ./configure --with-oss=yes (i believe) and i'd guess that installs oss drivers. i wonder what realtek does. i'll look inside their installer!


by the way with mythdora i still had no audio and aplay didn't show any cards. when opening alsamixer it showed cx88 in use. but the nvidia module was there. i just don't know how to switch to it!

There's a way to configure the modules to load in a particular order so your preferred sound device is the active one. Otherwise, you have to manually specify to use, e.g. /dev/dsp1 (instead of the default /dev/dsp) as your sound device file. In your case, it's easier to disable the cx88, which KnoppMyth will do for you.

_________________
KnoppMyth R5.5
MythiC Dragon v2.0
Join the KnoppMyth Frappr!

btw, did you see my post 67? i wonder if the problem is as simple as that! (it IS an HD audio codec afterall!)

also, i looked into realtek's installer and it seems to delete all sound drivers and load new ones but no oss support option! i don't know if that makes the difference. but i'll try adding the option to the configure command inside the installer. we'll see what'll happen! you think at the end i should also configure and install the oss driver (from alsa's site)?

although.. when one compares the installer to the manual installation instructions in the readme file, the manual installation says to add the following to the mprobe.conf file:
# ALSA portion
alias char-major-116 snd
alias snd-card-0 snd-hd-intel
# OSS/Free portion
alias char-major-14 soundcore
alias sound-slot-0 snd-card-0
# card #1
alias sound-service-0-0 snd-mixer-oss
alias sound-service-0-1 snd-seq-oss
alias sound-service-0-3 snd-pcm-oss
alias sound-service-0-8 snd-seq-oss
alias sound-service-0-12 snd-pcm-oss

I don't know where this part happens with the auto install! Couldn't see it anywhere in the installer..

(and by the way for ALC888 it is not the AC97 controler, it is the Azalia controller. [I recall you asking some question about AC97 at some point.. maybe I'm wrong ]

Let me know if you want me to email you the files .install and Readme.txt (they're both inside that zipped file you mentioned in some previous post on page 2, I think!)

ok. there's something strange going on!

i installed a fresh KM. then i got realtek's driver package and ran install.
looked at the output of lsmod | grep snd which showed the same things as before installation but moved around a bit. snd-hda-intel (the correct module) is no where to be seen. on the other hand, before installing, ls -l /dev/snd would only give the timer. After installation, i had a long list of things there. i reboot. look at lsmod | grep snd and it is exactly as it were before installation. i look at /dev/snd and it only shows the timer.

so i redo the whole thing, adding the lines suggested in the Readme file (see my previous post) to /etc/modules.conf. In these lines, there's an explicit link to snd-hda-intel. i reboot, and again lsmod | grep snd gives the same as a fresh install did and /dev/snd only has the timer.

so if we assume for a minute the installation of the card went fine and its module is snd-hda-intel.. how do i "activate" it? and if that works, then how do i make it automatically activate after a reboot?

another thing is that i don't know what these lines i added to /etc/modules.conf are!!

try:

or possibly

to load the driver

The lines you added basically say to load those other drivers with various options.

_________________
KnoppMyth R5.5
MythiC Dragon v2.0
Join the KnoppMyth Frappr!

but why is it that even when these line are in modules.conf, after i reboot (once i ran the realtek installation) lsmod |grep snd gives the same thing as it does upon a fresh install of KM?

also, the install program populates /dev/snd with lots of devices. then when i reboot, they're gone!!

it does launch alsaconf right at the end of the install process, but that doesn't find any supported cards.

also oss stuff does appear in lsmod | grep snd

Edit: I take that back! They only show up if I install the alsa drivers myself. Realtek's install seems to remove them.

i'm running things afresh right now and will post the before
and after once again. just to compare and see what's going on.

Edit: Another interesting thing is that after the install, I probe for snd-hda-intel and it appears in lsmod. i run alsaconf. doesn't find any supported cards. i run lsmod after that. no snd-hda-intel!!!!

[i should mention that this is what i'm doing: sticking in the cd, running through the config, then when X fails to launch right before mythtvsetup it gives me a console and i login as root and start installing the realtek driver.
i got fed up with installing the nvidia one every time and then having to reboot from the cd to try something else ]

Interesting! After running a fresh install of KM WITHOUT ANY updates whatsoever, logging in as root after launching X fails, and typing

does make snd-hda-intel show up in lsmod!

This IS the module I need! I'm now inclined to believe that it is NOT a
driver issue. I did notice a long time ago that alsa 1.0.13 (the one KM has)
IS supposed to support ALC888 and I was VERY surprised that I need to install 1.0.14!

But what else can the problem be?

ls -l /dev/snd shows only the timer. Where are all the other devices??

and if I run alsaconf snd-hda-intel disappears from lsmod. i can probe for it again, it'll reappear. alsaconf. and it's gone again.... moreover, the oss stuff is gone from lsmod after alsaconf is ran once!!!!!!

It definitely is NOT a driver problem.

What's going on?

Edit: I have HD audio set up to auto in the BIOS (the other option being Disable)

Here are the different results of lsmod | grep snd:

At reboot (without any updates etc. just used a fresh KM install):


After modprobe snd-hda-intel:


After alsaconf:

i read at several places that this is a bug of the current kernel. could this be true? some people claim that their snd-hda-intel(s) worked with earlier kernels and some claim they work with the new one. many say they don't work with the current one.

is updating the kernel a long and tough procedure? (does it start a chain reaction of things to update?) or is it a simple one?

also, will the new kernel be problematic or should KM run as smoothly with it?

thoughts?

here's some more info i just figured out:

lspci -i shows that the audio device is an nVidia 055c
(also shows a multimedia controller Conexant that lspci -n shows is 8801 but i think this is the pcHDTV card)

it is really a realtek alc888 but i'm guessing that since it is onboard it goes through the nvidia chip.

running


gives nothing!!

what does this mean??? why is the audio device missing from the pcimap?

Sorry for the consecutive posts. But I was trying to work hard on fixing this, since I want to get the rest of my life back asap!!!

I went ahead and tried MythDora again. Got it to work completely! [both sound and video] but didn't like the performance much. Video was choppy. KnoppMyth video was smooth! I don't know if there are some options that KM sets for me while I have to fiddle with them in MythDora.. In any case, even if MythDora works I still would like to figure out why audio doesn't work with KM.

But while working out the nVidia update something fortunate happened! X wouldn't start even when nVidia said the update went fine! After hours of trying to figure out what's wrong, I discovered that when MythDora was being setup I made a fortunate mistake and chose for it to upload the GeForce nVidia drivers (thinking mine would be one of them). The "old kernel" was put in some directory: /lib/modules/#kernel-version#/update/nvidia. My guess is that this is not a conventional name for the kernel and nvidia's installer didn't see it when it tried to remove the old kernel. Once I removed this directory, X started fine.

I thought then: could it be the same thing is happening with audio on KM?

I rebooted with KMs CD and ran lsmod -l hda-intel. Indeed, the kernel was in an updates directory! Moved the whole hda directory to /tmp. Ran Realtek's installer, alsaconf started, and boom: the card was there!!!!!

After alsaconf finished its magic, alsamixer still would give: No such device (even after reboot). modprobe snd-hda-intel gives a fatal error:
FATAL: Error inserting snd_hda_intel (/lib/modules/2.6.18.chw-13/kernel/sound/pci/hda/snd-hda-intel.ko): Unknown symbol in module, or unkown parameter (see dmesg)
FATAL: Error running install command from snd_hda_intel

(could it be alsaconf is trying to directly edit modules.conf which KM prevents?)

So I think moving that directory from updates to tmp wasn't quite the right thing to do. But it DID do something good, since the card got recognized. Now just have to figure out what's going on and and how to do it RIGHT!

There's still some work to do. But this is a BIG progress, I think! I still don't get snd-hda-intel to be probed correctly, but alsaconf now sees it!

If anybody understands now what's going on, please help putting me out of my misery! I need to finally get some sleep!!!