From Bugzilla Helper: User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7) Gecko/20040626 Firefox/0.9.1 Description of problem: Some non-PnP ISA sound cards (like the cs423x ones in the IBM ThinkPad 600 series) cannot be configured with {redhat,system}-config-soundcard. I'm not asking for system-config-soundcard to support these kinds of cards (that would be a dupe of bug 122838, which is CLOSED/WONTFIX). However, now that sndconfig has been removed (and correctly so), there is no way to automatically probe and configure older cards like these -- unless alsaconf is reenabled in alsa-utils. I know that Red Hat does not officially support non-PnP ISA soundcards, however this is a trivial change to the alsa-utils spec file, and it would save *tons* of effort for people like me who are stuck trying to configure these kinds of soundcards. Also, I know that alsaconf actually works once it's enabled in the RPM -- I tested this earlier this morning. Furthermore, people are already hacking around the lack of alsaconf in the FC2 alsa-utils by stuffing fedora.us FC1 alsa packages into their FC2 installs, which is really disgusting IMO: http://www.cs.utsa.edu/~bylander/fedora2-experience.html This type of disgusting act would be unnecessary if alsaconf was simply included in the alsa-utils package. It would be such a small change for Red Hat to make to the package that I believe it's worth doing for Fedora Core, even though Red Hat no longer officially supports this hardware. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): alsa-utils-1.0.5-1 How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Install FC2 or FC-devel. 2. Notice that system-config-soundcard doesn't configure your soundcard. Head to google, notice that people on other distributions are using alsaconf. 3. Run "alsaconf" as root to configure your soundcard. Actual Results: alsaconf: command not found Expected Results: alsaconf asks several questions and eventually gets the sound card working Additional info: I'm filing this bug against the "distribution" component because an "alsa-utils" component does not exist yet (that's bug 127672).
Exactly what does alsaconf do to detect non-PNP ISA cards?
I haven't read the source code yet so I'm not 100% sure, but it seems to do something like the following: + It asks the user the following questions: + Do you want to probe for legacy ISA cards? + What kinds of cards do you want to probe for? + Do you just want to probe for the common IO/IRQ/DMA combinations, or for all of the possible combinations that can be used by the kinds of cards you picked? + Then it tries loading (and unloading) different modules with different settings a bunch of times, to try the combinations and see what works + If no combinations work, it lets you know that, otherwise it asks if you want it to modify your /etc/modprobe.conf. It's something like that...
Eww; that's certianly not the sort of thing I want to encourage people to run.
I'm trying to help a guy get sound going on his thinkpad. What are the options? 1) Get a full build of alsa-utils 2) ? I've used alsaconf in the past and it's been quite nice. Run it, slap <enter> a few times, and everything comes up on reboot. Nice. It won't go modprobing like mad unless you tell it to go on an ISA hunt. Most folk won't need it at all, but for those that do? Well, what should we encourage?
Except... the ISA modprobe hunt is the only additional feature it gives you.
*** Bug 129414 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Ya, ISA modprobe hunt may be the only(?) additional feature, but what's wrong with that? It's needed by some people and it's part of the upstream packaging. It's a whopping 29k. Including it can save lots of hassle for lots of folk...
FWIW, perhaps a better replacement could be written for alsaconf (in the ThinkPad case) which uses tpctl or something related. However, I don't have the hardware in my possession at this time, and I probably won't have it again for a long while, so I won't be able to try implementing this anytime in the near future. Nonetheless, I figure the idea's worth mentioning in case someone else wants to try...
This is not just a thinkpad issue. I have two systems (both based on the ESS18xx chipset) which would not configure under FC3. In both cases rebuilding alsa-utils and running alsaconf got me my sound. One setup was an FC1->FC3 upgrade that cause the sound to go missing. The other was clean install (first FC2, then FC3) which never had sound. Alsaconf configure both. Granted, using the probe method is less than desireable, but alsaconf warns that may make your system unstable (didn't happen on either my machines). Given the warning, and the alternatives (throw out the laptop (not likely), replace the sound card (not easy on the laptop), throw out Fedora, or risk a crash in a controlled environment) It paid off in my case (and appearantly for a number of others who install back versions of alsa-utils).