Subj : Problems with sound on dell laptop, Fedora Core 2, Kernel 2.6.7
To   : alt.linux.redhat,alt.os.linux,comp.os.linux,comp.os.linux.redhat,linux.redhat
From : Jeffrey Silverman
Date : Sat Jul 24 2004 01:14 pm

Allright, I'll try to explain in as much detail as possible.

I have a Dell Inspiron 1150 running Fedora Core 2
I had upgraded the kernel to 2.6.7 from kernel.org
Sound worked just fine.  For everything.

My theory on system adminstration is that the thing that is not working
was broken by the last thing that changed, no matter how apparently
unrelated that thing is.  So now the sound isn't working, and here are the
things that changed:

1. I installed a USB mouse.  Actually, this probably isn't the problem,
because the sound was working immediately after that.

2. I installed a USB keyboard.  Actually, this also probably isn't the
problem, because the sound was working immediately after that as well.

3. I installed a PCMCIA WLAN Card.  Orinoco Classic Gold. It works.  But
to get it working, I upgraded the appropriate wlan drivers -- twice,
actually.  First I applied a patch I found somewhere to enable monitor
mode (monitor-0.13e.patch) and then, when that didn't work, I installed
the 0.15rc1 drivers (orinoco-0.15rc1.tar.gz from the sourceforge group
doing these drivers) (Actually that didn't work, either -- it turned out I
had a problem with the combination of card+Wireless router (Linksys
BEFWS11 or something like that). I had to flash the firmware on the router
and now everything is working. Working VERY WELL, in fact!)

The thing is, this last major change, the WLAN card, and now the sound
doesn't work, mostly.  If i run system-config-soundcard, then click "Play
Test sound", the GUI tool appears to hang for about a minute, and then,
voila!, it plays a sound.  And now sound works across the board!

But if I log out and log back on, sound is not working again!!

I checked the list of modules before and after system-config-soundcard,
and they are the same.  This util does not appear to load or unload any
modules that weren't already there.  It *does* appear to change the
permissions on /dev/dsp* and /dev/snd/* -- they start at a restrictive
chmod 700 and are changed to chmod 777 after running the GUI util.

So what is system-config-soundcard doing that I can't do manually?

Why does my sound go away?

I can workaround this problem, but I'd rather get it fixed. Any insdight
would be great.  Thanks in advance!

-- 
Jeffrey Silverman
jeffreyPANTS@jhu.edu
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