ALSA Sound absent with kernel 2.26.7-7 on Dell E520

[Jeremy Austin-Bardo]

After updated my box to the new kernel security update 2.26.7-7-generic, I have had issues hearing sounds from my speakers. I have figured out that I have to first sudo alsa force-unload then sudo modprobe snd-hda-intel to get the sounds to return. But each app that wants to use sound needs to be started after the commands are passed.

[Jeremy Austin-Bardo (ausimage)]

Performed after a reboot of my box setting things back to as before.

FROM REBOOT:
Testing sound with Gnome Sound Preferences set to HDA Intel Stac92xx Analog (ALSA) Shows a dialouge box with the following error: audiotestsrc wave=sine freq=512 ! audioconvert ! audioresample ! gconfaudiosink: Could not open audio device for playback.

PASS COMMANDS:
ausimage@feisty-desktop:~/Desktop$ sudo alsa force-unload
[sudo] password for ausimage:
lsof: WARNING: can't stat() fuse.gvfs-fuse-daemon file system /home/ausimage/.gvfs
      Output information may be incomplete.
Terminating processes: 5808 5882lsof: WARNING: can't stat() fuse.gvfs-fuse-daemon file system /home/ausimage/.gvfs
      Output information may be incomplete.
lsof: WARNING: can't stat() fuse.gvfs-fuse-daemon file system /home/ausimage/.gvfs
      Output information may be incomplete.
.
lsof: WARNING: can't stat() fuse.gvfs-fuse-daemon file system /home/ausimage/.gvfs
      Output information may be incomplete.
Unloading ALSA sound driver modules: snd-hda-intel snd-pcm-oss snd-mixer-oss snd-pcm snd-seq-dummy snd-seq-oss snd-seq-midi snd-rawmidi snd-seq-midi-event snd-seq snd-timer snd-seq-device snd-page-alloc.
ausimage@feisty-desktop:~/Desktop$ sudo modprobe snd-hda-intel

Sound Works, but does not stick after a reboot. Here is a copy of what my alsa info file looks like before the commands are applied. I also ran a diff between the two alsa info files and noticed the following (pre is changed to post): Converter: stream=0, chanel=0 is changed to stream=5, chanel=0 in several places as well as Subdevices: 1/1 becomes Subdevices: 0/1.

[Leann Ogasawara (leannogasawara)]

Hi Jeremy,

Can you post the output of 'cat /proc/version_signature'. I assume you are having issues with the 2.6.27-7.15 kernel? It would seem odd that this kernel is causing issues because there was only one change between the 2.6.27-7.14 and 2.6.27-7.15 kernel:

https://edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/

linux (2.6.27-7.15) intrepid-security; urgency=low

  [ Upstream Kernel Changes ]

  * tcp: Restore ordering of TCP options for the sake of inter-operability
    - LP: #264019

Did you happen pull in any other updates other than the kernel? Can you confirm if you boot back into the 2.6.27-7.14 kernel that the issue goes away? Thanks.

[Jeremy Austin-Bardo (ausimage)]

The output of 'cat /proc/version_signature' of says Ubuntu 2.6.27-7.16-generic. Actually, the -7.14 generic kernel is not available AFAIK.

[Jeremy Austin-Bardo (ausimage)]

I stand corrected looking harder I tend find an earlier kernel... which had similar issues... apparently it is not the kernel after all :/. I did a process comparison between before the kludge and after... it turns out that pulseaudio is the problem.

Now I when I just killall pulseaudio after testing it with sound preferences, it works... :)

[Jeremy Foshee (jeremyfoshee)]

Hi Jeremy,

This bug was reported a while ago and there hasn't been any activity in it recently. We were wondering if this is still an issue? Can you try with the latest development release of Ubuntu? ISO CD images are available from http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/lucid.

If it remains an issue, could you run the following command from a Terminal (Applications->Accessories->Terminal). It will automatically gather and attach updated debug information to this report.

apport-collect -p linux 294859

Also, if you could test the latest upstream kernel available that would be great. It will allow additional upstream developers to examine the issue. Refer to https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KernelMainlineBuilds . Once you've tested the upstream kernel, please remove the 'needs-upstream-testing' tag. This can be done by clicking on the yellow pencil icon next to the tag located at the bottom of the bug description and deleting the 'needs-upstream-testing' text. Please let us know your results.

Thanks in advance.

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