Ubuntu Intrepid is flawed

[Nigel Henry]

On Sunday 16 November 2008 21:24, Karl Larsen wrote:
> Nigel Henry wrote:
> > On Sunday 16 November 2008 18:47, Karl Larsen wrote:
> >> Glenn Holmer wrote:
> >>> On Sat, 2008-11-15 at 18:26 -0400, Derek Broughton wrote:
> >>>> That really is _nothing_ to do with Intrepid.  Sound is (almost)
> >>>> entirely a kernel function.  It's complete magic, and it's easy to
> >>>> break it.  Just go back to a working kernel.
> >>>
> >>> What about PulseAudio?  That's certainly not part of the kernel, and
> >>> many people have reported having problems with it.
> >>>
> >>>> Intrepid certainly has its problems, but sound is not strictly one of
> >>>> them.
> >>>
> >>> I had no sound from my Audigy card until I went to the volume control
> >>> and de-selected "Audigy Analog/Digital Output Jack", which I don't
> >>> remember having had to do before.  I still don't know if any of the
> >>> more exotic things I tried first had any effect, although it's all good
> >>> now.
> >>
> >>     Here is some good data from loading Intrepid on my laptop and
> >> allowing no updates at all. Here is what I did:
> >>
> >>     1. Loaded Intrepid from LiveCD.
> >>
> >>     2. Re-booted to hard drive and d/l VLC and found my movies have
> >> sound and picture.
> >>
> >>     3. Re-booted and the re-boot hung on the item "turn off (sound
> >> software)" and I turned off the power.
> >>
> >>     4. Brought it back on and all sound is gone. In fact the sound
> >> device on the upper edge was turned off. I turned it back on but it did
> >> no good.
> >>
> >>     5. I re-boot and waited for it to re-boot which is a long time. When
> >> it came back up still no sound.
> >>
> >>
> >>     The conclusions are simple and not worth much I fear. But for what
> >> it is worth the 180 Updates have zero zero effect on the sound problem.
> >> I will now let the updates flow and verify this no improvement.
> >>
> >>     The problem can be my laptop. The only reason not to blame the
> >> laptop is that Windows runs fine and has good sound right now. It is
> >> Vista Basic.
> >>
> >>
> >> Karl
> >
> > Hi Karl.
> >
> > I'm sorry that your having sound problems on your machine. For what it's
> > worth, vlc won't play dvd's on mine, either Kubuntu, or Ubuntu 8.10, but
> > Xine, and Ogle play them with no problems, and all very strange.
> >
> > Regarding your sound problems, and at the moment, after rebooting the
> > sounds are gone. Would you post the output from the following commands
> > please.
> >
> > cat /proc/asound/cards
> > grep ^Codec /proc/asound/card?/codec*
> > lsmod | grep snd
> > lspci   (just the bit for the soundcard)
> >
> > Nigel.
>
>     Hi Nigel here it is I think:
>
>
> karl at karl-laptop:~$ cat /proc/asound/cards
>  0 [Intel          ]: HDA-Intel - HDA Intel
>                       HDA Intel at 0x94700000 irq 22
> karl at karl-laptop:~$ grep ^Codec /proc/asound/card?/codec*
> /proc/asound/card0/codec#0:Codec: Conexant CX20561 (Hermosa)
> /proc/asound/card0/codec#2:Codec: Generic 8086 ID 2802
> karl at karl-laptop:~$ lsmod | grep snd
> snd_hda_intel         381488  2
> snd_pcm_oss            46848  0
> snd_mixer_oss          22784  1 snd_pcm_oss
> snd_pcm                83204  2 snd_hda_intel,snd_pcm_oss
> snd_seq_dummy          10884  0
> snd_seq_oss            38528  0
> snd_seq_midi           14336  0
> snd_rawmidi            29824  1 snd_seq_midi
> snd_seq_midi_event     15232  2 snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_midi
> snd_seq                57776  6
> snd_seq_dummy,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_midi,snd_seq_midi_event
> snd_timer              29960  2 snd_pcm,snd_seq
> snd_seq_device         15116  5
> snd_seq_dummy,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_midi,snd_rawmidi,snd_seq
> snd                    63268  13
> snd_hda_intel,snd_pcm_oss,snd_mixer_oss,snd_pcm,snd_seq_oss,snd_rawmidi,snd
>_seq,snd_timer,snd_seq_device soundcore              15328  1 snd
> snd_page_alloc         16136  2 snd_hda_intel,snd_pcm
> karl at karl-laptop:~$
>
> 00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) HD Audio
>  Controller (rev 03)
>
>
> I hope this is what you want. If I can help you in any way again just
> ask. I will try to make sense of this stuff :-)
>
>
> Karl

Hi Karl.

Well your soundcard is detected, and all the relevant modules are loaded.

As the sounds were working before you rebooted, it may be that something in 
the mixer may be muted.

Open alsamixer as user in Gnomes terminal. that should display just one slider 
if pulseaudio is running.

Now close alsamixer using the "esc" key, and start alsamixer again using the 
following command, which will show all the alsamixer settings.

alsamixer -D hw:0

You may find that some sliders are set to zero, or muted (the "M" key toggles 
the mute/unmute). the main sliders of interest are "Master", "PCM", and 
"Front", and also the "CD" one if your testing the sounds out using an audio 
cd.

Nigel.