"but I don't get why you're trying to play back a configuration file..."
Greetings, David -- yes, I was piping a textfile to the speakers, just to generate some noise (and prove whether they were working). One can omit those lines, or replace them with aplay /usr/share/sounds/alsa/Noise.wav but my favorite is this alternative -- espeak "I'll be back" The advantage of using aplay with a *known* filename (in the context of my script) is there are no dependencies; that's the reason behind it. "just running a 3.5+ ubuntu kernel (or 3.6+ upstream kernel) fixes this bug completely" Can you please put that in the read-me-first description? I actually looked for just such a phrase. I realize that it says FixReleased for Precise at the top, but the comments are confusing... you talk about backporting to the 3.5 kernel, but you also specify that as Quantal, then go on to mention that you *want* it in 12.04.2 -- without ever coming right out and saying that it in fact now is in 12.04.3 (and .2?). I suggest this sentence: "If you're suffering from... 1)... 2)... The easiest fix is to update your system to the latest 12.04.3+ updates, or alternatively a 12.10-or-later installation. If you have done so and still have problems, the workaround in comment#32 sometimes helps, but whether it does or not, please file a separate launchpad bug." https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/alsa-driver/+bug/1236965 I have filed another bug for my specific issues over here. As to the more general issue of making audio not suck: "Over 80% of audio bugs, including this one, are specific to the codec *configuration*, which is usually best described with the PCI SSID number or vendor+model. Bugs specific to a codec (Realtek ALC892) or controller chip (Intel ICH6) are much less common." Well... I have a relatively rare motherboard SSID... but still.... (alsa OR pulseaudio) ("alc 892" OR "alc892") ==>> 94 hits (alsa OR pulseaudio) ("1558:8000" OR "15588000" OR "0x15588000") ==>> zero hits Some rough back-of-the-browser calculations suggest that using the SSID as a key to debugging audio problems is rare, at the moment. Maybe it makes sense to start using it? If enough ubuntu people are aware of the SSID connection, and use it to debug their audio-related-difficulties, then launchpad search results specific to your motherboard or videocard would be much easier to locate. I'll go ahead and paste my SSID stuff here, into the bug... making my comment the NUMBER ONE HIT when googling. Not that I'm bragging or anything -- humble to the core, that's me. :-) https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Audio/SameHardware (explains which portions of the output below are pci_vid and pci_ssid.) $ cat /proc/asound/card*/codec#* | grep --before-context=4 --after-context=1 "Subsystem Id" Codec: Realtek ALC892 Address: 0 AFG Function Id: 0x1 (unsol 1) Vendor Id: 0x10ec0892 Subsystem Id: 0x15588000 Revision Id: 0x100302 -- Codec: ATI R6xx HDMI Address: 0 AFG Function Id: 0x1 (unsol 0) Vendor Id: 0x1002aa01 Subsystem Id: 0x00aa0100 Revision Id: 0x100200 $ lspci -vvnn | grep --after-context=1 "Audio device" 00:1b.0 Audio device [0403]: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family High Definition Audio Controller [8086:1c20] (rev 05) Subsystem: CLEVO/KAPOK Computer Device [1558:8000] -- 01:00.1 Audio device [0403]: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Barts HDMI Audio [Radeon HD 6800 Series] [1002:aa88] Subsystem: CLEVO/KAPOK Computer Device [1558:8000] The webpage suggests manually *reading* through the output of these commands, hunting the ssid buried therein. I've added some grep to the commands, which reliably extracts the info... on English installs only. Won't work if your system is German/Japanese/Esperanto/other. I would modify the "wikipage" to show this trick, but it is immutable (sigh). A cleaner way to get these numbers: should there be a debug-tab in the sound-settings dialog-box, which gives the average enduser their specific SSID info, plus a ClickHereToCopyAlsaInfoReportToClipboard gui button? Let me rephrase that -- there *should* be such a thing. Do you feel like implementing it? If not, care to point me in the right direction? Reply via email if you wish. 'J wrote: _Do not see your microphone? (again with the hyperlink)_' "This backporting has already been done. ...I think this bug is not that much of an issue any more." Sure, what you say is true. But this bug WAS a problem, in the past. And my new bug, which I will file a separate bug report concerning, is also a problem. With the exact same symptoms. My point is, the current sound-settings GUI does not give the average enduser any clue when something is *wrong*. This can be a mismatch between what the pulseaudio layer believes is true versus what the alsa layer believes is true, or an assumption about hardware, or whatever. Yes, yes, I fully agree that the best approach is to fix the bugs at their root. I'd *also* like to have a dynamically-auto-updated helpstring in the sound-settings dialog-box, plus a debug-tab, to help speed that up. In my situation, I *knew* the box had internal speakers... but I did not know that pulseaudio could fail to recognize them! They were showing up in alsamixer, after all. Then, to report the bug, I had to figure out how to generate alsa-info, and all that jazz. Not impossible... but not very easy, either. I'm savvy, so the hard part for me was figuring out what the heck was going on. The only reason I finally stumbled across this bug-report, with the workaround that helped my issue, is because I read your 2011 paper on the design of the alsa stack, and noticed it said you were planning to make some changes to pulseaudio that would HIDE DEVICES, and then plugged your name plus pulseaudio into the interwebs... this bug report is hit#2. :-) Obviously, that is *not* the preferred way to debug audio. I see that you wrote a nice blog post about six months ago, on how NOT to debug audio. I saw plenty of advice to fiddle with model-strings, hand-compile ALSA drivers, purge pulseaudio. *Modern* advice, not just the older advice still hanging around to fallback to OSS. http://web.archive.org/web/20121007001709/http://voices.canonical.com/david.henningsson/2012/07/13/top-five-wrong-ways-to-fix-your-audio/ (Side note -- your blog shows up blank in Firefox on Ubuntu 12.04.3 when visiting the URL directly... maybe I should file this bug also? Blogtext is visible here -- http://voices.canonical.com/user/128/ -- but comments are only visible in archive.org, and not for all posts.) But where is your post saying what *to* do in order to debug audio? This official helpdoc is definitely not at all what I'm after -- https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DebuggingSoundProblems It tells me to manually verify whether things are muted. Doesn't pulse audio already know that? It tells me to manually verify whether things are plugged in. Doesn't jack-sense already tell us that? It tells me that my first step, if I *think* that I possibly *might* have an audio bug, is to run ubuntu-bug -s audio ... skipping DIY troubleshooting, skipping volunteer-forum-support, and going straight to the devteam. That all seems wrong to me. We have eclipse/xdebug/gdb for debugging buggy code. Where is the visual equivalent for debugging buggy audio? You mention in the comments on your post that it is difficult to DTRT in the audio world, because there is so much hardware diversity (my own case with "unusual hardware" being a clear example of same). What I'm suggesting is that, because of the inherent problem that the audio stack is complex, and the buggy^H^H^H^H^H diverse hardware drivers are seemingly endless, we are *guaranteed* to have people suffering from audio bugs, until and unless ubuntu bug#1 is really and truly resolved. I don't see much hope for ending binary-blob drivers, and even worse, binary-blob firmware, in the next five years. I do see that ubuntu is trying valiantly to increase the number of Linux devices in both the desktop and the mobile space, during the next five years. Conclusion, the audio stack will be buggier than ever, no matter how hard you try to DTRT in your code. (btw I fully sympathize with you here... fixing the way pulseaudio deals with aggregating alsamixer into a clean gui interface was totally necessary... but this bug was *bound* to happen) So, instead of putting the focus on trying to make the audio DTRT in an endlessly-changing sea of buggy hardware, I suggest we put some effort into making the debugging of audio problems far more straightforward. So endeth the rant. Sorry to overflow your inbox. -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Desktop Packages, which is subscribed to pulseaudio in Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/946232 Title: [Meta-bug] Missing speaker and/or internal mic port Status in “pulseaudio” package in Ubuntu: Fix Released Status in “pulseaudio” source package in Precise: Fix Released Bug description: ==== Read me first ==== If you're suffering from one of the following problems: 1) In the sound settings dialog, when you plug your headphones into the designated 3.5 mm jack, there is a "Headphones" device correctly shown, but when you unplug it, there is no "Speaker" device shown, even though you have internal speakers on your computer. 2) In the sound settings dialog, when you plug your external microphone into the designated 3.5 mm jack, there is a "Microphone" (or similar) device correctly shown, but when you unplug it, there is no "Internal Mic" device shown, even though you have an internal mic on your computer. If so, please try the workaround in comment #32. IF AND ONLY IF that is working for you, please attach alsa info (see https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Audio/AlsaInfo ) to this bug, together with the name of your machine (e g "Dell Latitude D620"). I'll try to include it in a list of devices that we have to manually enable and release it as an update to 12.04. Thanks! - and sorry for causing the bug in the first place :-/ // David Henningsson ==== The following machines are known to be affected (no more alsa-info needed) : # Acer AOA150 # Acer Aspire 4810TZ # Acer Aspire 1810TZ # Packard bell dot m/a # Acer AOD260, AO532h # Dell MXC051 # Dell Inspiron 6400 and E1505 # Dell Latitude D620 # Dell Latitude D820 # Dell Latitude D520 # Dell Latitude D420 # Dell Inspiron 1525 # Dell Inspiron 1011 # Dell XPS 14 (L401X) # Dell XPS 15 (L501X) # Dell XPS 15 (L502X) # Asus 904HA (1000H) # Asus T101MT # Sony Vaio VGN-SR21M # Sony Vaio VPC-W115XG # Fujitsu Lifebook S7110 # Fujitsu Lifebook A530 # Toshiba A200 # MSI X360 # Lenovo 3000 Y410 ==== ==== SRU Justification === First, sorry if this bug is a bit messy, but I think it would be even more messy if I spread the information across several bugs. Here's some explanation: The long-term fix is already in Quantal, because we backported the "Phantom Jack" support into Ubuntu's 3.5 kernel. Together with that comes a small PulseAudio patch, http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~ubuntu- audio-dev/pulseaudio/ubuntu.precise/revision/519/debian/patches/0624 -alsa-mixer-Add-Phantom-Jack-support.patch - the reason I want this in 12.04 is to provide a better experience for users running the quantal kernel on precise, i e, the backport kernel coming with 12.04.2. In addition to that, while doing an SRU I could just as well add a few more quirks for affected machines showing up after the previous SRU, so that is now done in http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~ubuntu-audio- dev/pulseaudio/ubuntu.precise/revision/520/debian/patches/0625-alsa- mixer-Add-a-few-more-machines-to-internal-mic-w.patch [Impact] Several laptops (see above list) are missing mostly internal mics, but sometimes also speakers in the Sound Settings / PulseAudio. This leads to an inability to control volume for these devices, and often not being able to use them at all. [Test Case] * Have an affected machine * Notice that when your mic is unplugged, the "internal mic" is correctly shown in the sound settings [Regression Potential] The quirk-style fix only affects the machines above. The long-term fix affects only users of a newer (quantal or later) kernel. ==== I have an DELL Inspiron 6400. As it seems ubuntu precise beta1 thinks it has a digital ouput. In the audio settings it says Play sound through: »Digital Output (S/PDIF)« As you can see there → http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/ins6400/en/om/specs.htm#wp1054816 it has no S/PDIF output. The audio Settings doesn't let me change the mode. Sometime the system sets the mode to »Digital Stereo (IEC958) Output« but the drop-down list menu is grayed out so I can't change it. If I plug in and out my headphones the system changes the mode to »Analog Stereo Output« and I can hear Sound again. If you need more Information please let me know. ProblemType: Bug DistroRelease: Ubuntu 12.04 Package: alsa-base 1.0.25+dfsg-0ubuntu1 ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.2.0-17.27-generic-pae 3.2.6 Uname: Linux 3.2.0-17-generic-pae i686 AlsaVersion: Advanced Linux Sound Architecture Driver Version 1.0.24. ApportVersion: 1.94-0ubuntu1 Architecture: i386 ArecordDevices: **** List of CAPTURE Hardware Devices **** card 0: Intel [HDA Intel], device 0: STAC92xx Analog [STAC92xx Analog] Subdevices: 1/1 Subdevice #0: subdevice #0 AudioDevicesInUse: USER PID ACCESS COMMAND /dev/snd/controlC0: achim 2281 F.... pulseaudio Card0.Amixer.info: Card hw:0 'Intel'/'HDA Intel at 0xefebc000 irq 43' Mixer name : 'SigmaTel STAC9200' Components : 'HDA:83847690,102801bd,00102201 HDA:14f12bfa,14f100c3,00090000' Controls : 14 Simple ctrls : 7 Date: Sun Mar 4 11:14:53 2012 InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 12.04 LTS "Precise Pangolin" - Beta i386 (20120301) PackageArchitecture: all ProcEnviron: TERM=xterm PATH=(custom, no user) LANG=de_DE.UTF-8 SHELL=/bin/bash SourcePackage: alsa-driver Symptom: audio Symptom_AlsaPlaybackTest: ALSA playback test through plughw:Intel successful Symptom_Card: Eingebautes Audio - HDA Intel Symptom_Jack: Black SPDIF Out, Rear Symptom_PulsePlaybackTest: PulseAudio playback test successful Symptom_Type: No sound at all Title: [MM061, SigmaTel STAC9200, Black SPDIF Out, Rear] No sound at all UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install) dmi.bios.date: 06/13/2007 dmi.bios.vendor: Dell Inc. dmi.bios.version: A17 dmi.board.name: 0KD882 dmi.board.vendor: Dell Inc. dmi.chassis.type: 8 dmi.chassis.vendor: Dell Inc. dmi.modalias: dmi:bvnDellInc.:bvrA17:bd06/13/2007:svnDellInc.:pnMM061:pvr:rvnDellInc.:rn0KD882:rvr:cvnDellInc.:ct8:cvr: dmi.product.name: MM061 dmi.sys.vendor: Dell Inc. --- AlsaVersion: Advanced Linux Sound Architecture Driver Version 1.0.24. ApportVersion: 1.95-0ubuntu1 Architecture: i386 AudioDevicesInUse: USER PID ACCESS COMMAND /dev/snd/controlC0: achim 1740 F.... pulseaudio DistroRelease: Ubuntu 12.04 InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 12.04 LTS "Precise Pangolin" - Beta i386 (20120301) Package: alsa-driver (not installed) ProcEnviron: TERM=xterm PATH=(custom, no user) LANG=de_DE.UTF-8 SHELL=/bin/bash ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.2.0-20.32-generic-pae 3.2.12 Tags: precise Uname: Linux 3.2.0-20-generic-pae i686 UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install) UserGroups: adm cdrom dip lpadmin plugdev sambashare sudo dmi.bios.date: 06/13/2007 dmi.bios.vendor: Dell Inc. dmi.bios.version: A17 dmi.board.name: 0KD882 dmi.board.vendor: Dell Inc. dmi.chassis.type: 8 dmi.chassis.vendor: Dell Inc. dmi.modalias: dmi:bvnDellInc.:bvrA17:bd06/13/2007:svnDellInc.:pnMM061:pvr:rvnDellInc.:rn0KD882:rvr:cvnDellInc.:ct8:cvr: dmi.product.name: MM061 dmi.sys.vendor: Dell Inc. To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/pulseaudio/+bug/946232/+subscriptions -- Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~desktop-packages Post to : [email protected] Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~desktop-packages More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
