On 2020-03-01 at 06:46, Eduardo Ochs wrote:
Hi list,
I have two Debian 10 partitions on my laptop - a venerable ThinkPad
T400 with libreboot - and in one of these partitions (in /dev/sda5,
a.k.a. the "bad partition") sound doesn't work, and in the other one
(/dev/sda4, a.k.a. the "good partition" from here on) it does...
The "bad partition" had Debian 9, and after I upgraded it to 10 with
"apt-get dist-upgrade" sound stopped working on it (details soon). I
then installed Debian 10 from a installation pen drive on an empty
partition to be able to test things on both; sound works on it
perfectly, so let's call it the "good partition".
I've tried several sound debugging recipes that I found on the
internets and they didn't work, so I've decided to use this as an
excuse to learn more about sound on Linux.
"Sound doesn't work" here means that all applications that play
sound - including speaker-test, that seems to be very low-level -
behave normally, but I can't hear anything - even when I use alsamixer
to set "Master", "Headphon", "Speaker", "PCM", "Beep" and "Internal"
all to the maximum level.
I tried to follow the instructions here,
https://wiki.debian.org/Sound
and I sort of converted them - except for the step with pavucontrol;
more on it at the end of the e-mail - into a script... this one:
logthis () { echo $*:; eval $* 2>&1; echo; echo; }
{
# Debian version
logthis cat /etc/issue
logthis cat /etc/debian_version
logthis cat /etc/os-release
logthis lsb_release -da
logthis hostnamectl
# List devices and PCMs
logthis aplay -l
logthis aplay -L
# Drivers and modules
logthis "lspci -vvv | grep -A8 Audio"
logthis "lspci -knn | grep -A2 Audio"
# Permissions
logthis groups
logthis ls -lAF /proc/asound/
# This partition
logthis "mount | grep 'on / '"
# ALSA state
logthis "rm -f /tmp/o; /usr/sbin/alsactl -f /tmp/o store; cat /tmp/o"
} | tee ~/oalsa
I ran it in both partitions and compared the outputs with tkdiff.
Here are the relevant differences:
1) In the bad partition the output of "aplay -l" is:
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: Intel [HDA Intel], device 0: CX20561 Analog [CX20561 Analog]
Subdevices: 0/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: Intel [HDA Intel], device 1: CX20561 Digital [CX20561 Digital]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
and in the good partition it is:
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: Intel [HDA Intel], device 0: CX20561 Analog [CX20561 Analog]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: Intel [HDA Intel], device 1: CX20561 Digital [CX20561 Digital]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
Note the "Subdevices: 0/1" in the bad partition.
2) In the output of "/usr/sbin/alsactl -f /tmp/o store" some of
fields "value.0", "value.1", "dbvalue.0", "dbvalue.1", are
different between the two partitions, but they are all in the
allowed ranges and they look reasonable to me (i.e., to my
untrained eye).
3) In the output of "/usr/sbin/alsactl -f /tmp/o store" the
subsections of "state.Intel { ... }" appear in a different order.
In the good partition the subsections 10-25 are numbered like
this,
control.10 : name 'Beep Playback Volume'
control.11 : name 'Beep Playback Switch'
control.12 : name 'IEC958 Playback Con Mask'
control.13 : name 'IEC958 Playback Pro Mask'
control.14 : name 'IEC958 Playback Default'
control.15 : name 'IEC958 Playback Switch'
control.16 : name 'IEC958 Default PCM Playback Switch'
control.17 : name 'Master Playback Volume'
control.18 : name 'Master Playback Switch'
control.19 : name 'Mic Jack'
control.20 : name 'Internal Mic Phantom Jack'
control.21 : name 'Dock Mic Jack'
control.22 : name 'Speaker Phantom Jack'
control.23 : name 'Dock Headphone Jack'
control.24 : name 'Headphone Jack'
control.25 : name 'SPDIF Phantom Jack'
and in the bad partition like this:
control.10 : name 'IEC958 Playback Con Mask'
control.11 : name 'IEC958 Playback Pro Mask'
control.12 : name 'IEC958 Playback Default'
control.13 : name 'IEC958 Playback Switch'
control.14 : name 'IEC958 Default PCM Playback Switch'
control.15 : name 'Master Playback Volume'
control.16 : name 'Master Playback Switch'
control.17 : name 'Mic Jack'
control.18 : name 'Internal Mic Phantom Jack'
control.19 : name 'Dock Mic Jack'
control.20 : name 'Speaker Phantom Jack'
control.21 : name 'Dock Headphone Jack'
control.22 : name 'Headphone Jack'
control.23 : name 'SPDIF Phantom Jack'
control.24 : name 'Beep Playback Volume'
control.25 : name 'Beep Playback Switch'
About pavucontrol: in the bad partition the only output device that
appears in the "Output Devices" tab is called "Dummy Output". This
looks like a red flag, but I got the impression - please confirm -
that PulseAudio runs on a level above ALSA, and problems with
PulseAudio should not affect the behavior of speaker-test.
So: any hints? What should I add to my script to compare the behavior
of ALSA in the two partitions? Am I wrong in thinking that
speaker-test ignores PulseAudio? How do I examine the status of
PulseAudio without using the GUI? Are there ways to mute and unmute
the sound using the functions in /usr/share/alsa/utils.sh? What
else?...
Thanks in advance!
Eduardo Ochs
http://angg.twu.net/
http://angg.twu.net/emacsconf2019.html
(^ on "executable notes")
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So I am not alone in this! I have the same experience with no sound
after upgrade. I have not tried to log anything like you, Eduardo.
Instead I tried to find if there was some lacking routines, and
installed quite many, most of them probably not necessary, but I took
chances. Finally I gave up and skipped the system and made a clean
install on the same partitions. And now I got sound so I was satisfied.
But! With the upgrade version, from time to time a kind of icon with a
loudspeaker in a square popped up on the screen, so I assumed it tried
to notify me on something lacking or maybe the wrong version. It popped
up suddenly, even if I did not demand a sound, rested there for a second
or two, then disappeared. And this happened with an increasing
frequency. When it was there the keyboard was locked, and I could do
nothing. The sole solution I could find on this was a cold restart,
after which I most often could finish what I wanted until closing the
session and shutdown. I tried to take a screenshot but I never
succeeded. Below the loudspeaker image, inside the square, there was a
"thermometer" scale with an increasing value for each appearance. I was
a wee afraid for what should happen when it reached one hundred percent,
but before that I made the clean install.
After this the loudspeaker icon has not appeared - until a couple of
days ago, when it popped up again. I immediately made a cold restart,
and so far it has not come back. As a Linux user we are used to not
having to worry about viruses, even if this is no law of nature, but the
thought is yet there. Could this be one.
Kaj
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