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Akisame
Asked: 2014-01-31 13:11:12 +0800 CST

No sound (no sound card detected)

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I'm installing an old laptop for a mentally challenged person who only uses it to listen to music and surf online. A Packard Bell easynote S5.

I've installed Lubuntu 13.10 and everything works perfectly after a little bit of work. The only problem I haven't been able to surmount was that there is no sound.

I first tried to open alsamixer and it game the following output

Cannot open mixer: File or directory does not exist

Neither could I run:

cat /proc/asound/card0/codec* | grep Codec

cat /proc/asound/cards outputs

--- no soundcards ---

sudo lspci -v outputs the following:

00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) High Definition Audio Controller (rev 04)
    Subsystem: Packard Bell B.V. Device c011
    Flags: fast devsel, IRQ 5
    Memory at b0000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
    Capabilities: [50] Power Management version 2
    Capabilities: [60] MSI: Enable- Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit+
    Capabilities: [70] Express Root Complex Integrated Endpoint, MSI 00
    Capabilities: [100] Virtual Channel
    Capabilities: [130] Root Complex Link

I tried installing the realtek drivers but those failed

Does anyone have a solution?

Edit: I got a weird suggestion to try editing /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf I now get a sound icon but still no sound (duh, still no sound card detected)

Oke, I've discovered that the installation process didn't properly install the sound modules since it apparently doesn't have access to the linux-restricted-modules I'm attempting to fix this now

Edit2: Didn't work :(

It might be usefull to note that the sound did work on the (old) version of opensuse that I installed about 7 years ago on this laptop

Edit3: You know what. screw alsa. I'll just use magic and make drivers appear

I found the correct drivers for my sound card (from opensound.com's oos package). It was discontinued in 2008 and doesn't work with my (much newer) kernel :(

The good thing is: I'm getting close

My only options are to either use a really old kernel version or install Windows XP or something like that.

drivers

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    I am running ubuntu 14.04 on a msi z170a motherboard. This my fourth ubuntu 14.04 and all my hardware is different. I also run fvwm2 as my window manager so I don't use the gnome or unity desktops. What that means is I run gnome-'setup-stuff' from an xterm or gnome-terminal.

    I have spent hours and hours trying to get my sound to work. What has been and worked for my latest build is something like this.

    From a terminal logged in as root. or you can sudo commands I believe the following solved my problem.

    As root I ran gnome-control-center sound
    Then I did 

    xen2:~> ls -l /dev/snd
total 0
drwxrwxrwx  2 root root       80 Mar 21 11:13 by-path
crw-rw-rw-+ 1 root audio 116,  2 Mar 21 11:13 controlC0
crw-rw-rw-+ 1 root audio 116,  7 Mar 21 11:13 controlC1
crw-rw-rw-+ 1 root audio 116,  6 Mar 21 11:13 hwC0D0
crw-rw-rw-+ 1 root audio 116, 10 Mar 21 11:13 hwC1D0
crw-rw-rw-+ 1 root audio 116,  4 Mar 21 17:16 pcmC0D0c
crw-rw-rw-+ 1 root audio 116,  3 Mar 21 17:24 pcmC0D0p
crw-rw-rw-+ 1 root audio 116,  5 Mar 21 11:13 pcmC0D2c
crw-rw-rw-+ 1 root audio 116,  8 Mar 21 17:04 pcmC1D3p
crw-rw-rw-+ 1 root audio 116,  9 Mar 21 16:54 pcmC1D7p
crw-rw-rw-+ 1 root audio 116,  1 Mar 21 11:13 seq
crw-rw-rw-+ 1 root audio 116, 33 Mar 21 11:13 timer

    The ls -l was just to see the files and permissions

    The permission for the files above were different when I first looked at /dev/snd. To get a list of file and dirs 

    find /dev/snd
/dev/snd
/dev/snd/hwC1D0
/dev/snd/pcmC1D7p
/dev/snd/pcmC1D3p
/dev/snd/controlC1
/dev/snd/by-path
/dev/snd/by-path/pci-0000:01:00.1
/dev/snd/by-path/pci-0000:00:1f.3
/dev/snd/hwC0D0
/dev/snd/pcmC0D2c
/dev/snd/pcmC0D0c
/dev/snd/pcmC0D0p
/dev/snd/controlC0
/dev/snd/seq
/dev/snd/timer

    Write the above to a file.
    xen2:~> ls -l /dev/snd >> /root/reboot_fixes

    Then I edited /root/reboot_fixes with chmod 777 for all directoies and chmod 666 for all files.

    ever time I reboot I have to run /root/reboot_fixes. but this is the only way I could get sound to work. I've read dozens of do this and none worked. This works for me.

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