No alsa module on ubuntu core image

[Didier Roche-Tolomelli]

Ubuntu Core image 16 (at least the rpi2 one) doesn't have any alsa kernel module loaded.

Now that snappy starts to get alsa support, it would be great to be able to use that future on IoT devices which supports sound. Without kernel module support, no snap using alsa would be functional.

[Zygmunt Krynicki (zyga)]

The also interface has the ability to load a kernel module when an interface is being connected. We could do that for also. Is the module name "alsa"?

[Didier Roche-Tolomelli (didrocks)]

As discussed on IRC, the modules seem to be dependant of your hw configuration.

Key file for loading modules is /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf.

[Oliver Grawert (ogra)]

there are about 100 modules for different sound cards in different setups ... see /usr/share/alsa/cards/ ... (which is mainly x86 cards)

for ARM SoCs most of the time there is UCM (use case manager) used instead of raw alsa (see /usr/share/alsa/ucm for this) ...

the drivers themselves should be shipped along with our kernel snaps, not sure what dider wants to point our with the quirks file in /etc/modprobe.d though ..

technically the kernel should always autoload the matching module for the sound device on udev trigger/kernel uevent when the hardware is recognized, this looks more like a systemic issue since the modules seem to be shipped but not loaded ...