hoary fails to install sound with cs4236 (ThinkPad 770)

[Axel Braun]

Sound was working fine for older SuSE releases and kernel 2.4.x series. Now I
tried Kubuntu 5.04, but up to now it was impossible to get sound. Yes, I have
read the forum and followed the hints.
root@tp770:~ # modprobe snd-cs4236
FATAL: Error inserting snd_cs4236
(/lib/modules/2.6.10-5-386/kernel/sound/isa/cs423x/snd-cs4236.ko): No such device
FATAL: Error running install command for snd_cs4236

Of course the module is there, but there is no sound device created during
installation and boot. /dev/sn* is completely empty. I assume that this is the
root cause, but I have no clue how to solve this....

[Thomas Hood (jdthood)]

Use the DOS PS2.EXE command to enable the sound device.

[Axel Braun (axel-braun)]

Did this already, but the result is still unpredictable.
After a start or reboot no sound driver is loaded (although the setup is specified
in /etc/modprobe.d/sound:
options snd device_mode=0666
alias snd-card-0 snd-cs4236
alias sound-slot-0 snd-cs4236
options snd-cs4236 port=0x530 cport=0x538 isapnp=0 dma1=1 dma2=0 irq=5
when loading the driver manually it works. Then you can run /usr/share/alsa-base/snddevices, then
restart the session for that KDE finds /dev/dsp0....this is not really how it should work.

[Axel Braun (axel-braun)]

I forgot: You have to unmute the volume using alsamixer as well....

[Thomas Hood (jdthood)]

Do you have alsa-base installed and have you selected ALSA in "dpkg-reconfigure
linux-sound-base"?

[Thomas Hood (jdthood)]

Almost certainly something wrong locally.

[Axel Braun (axel-braun)]

Sorry for not responding so long, was on vacation. I did a kunbuntu standard
installation, alsa and linux sound main is installed (according to
aptitude), but a package called 'linux-sound-base' does not exist.
My workaround so far is that I inserted a little script in the runlevel 3&5
to do a modprobe cs4236 - then everything works fine. But I dont think that
this is a solution for ubuntu as standard......

[Thomas Hood (jdthood)]

I am glad that the snd-cs4236 module now loads and works properly.

Adding the module name to /etc/modules is a simpler way to ensure
that the module is loaded at boot time.

[Axel Braun (axel-braun)]

Well, for the kernel 2.6 series it should be in /etc/modprobe.d/sound - where it
is added, but it is although *not* being loaded....

[Thomas Hood (jdthood)]

(In reply to comment #8)
> Well, for the kernel 2.6 series it should be in /etc/modprobe.d/sound - where it
> is added, but it is although *not* being loaded....

It is true that the "snd-card-0" alias in /etc/modprobe.d/sound can result
in the module named by the argument of that alias getting loaded automatically
by libasound2 when a libasound2-using application attempts to open sound card #0.
However, this mechanism does not work reliably on systems with udev.

These days we expect hotplug or discover to load all required driver modules
at boot time, but because hotplug and discover are imperfect it is sometimes
necessary to add module names to /etc/modules.