sound card order in fc9

[Fernando Lopez-Lezcano]

I'm trying to find out how to change the default order of the sound
cards in Fedora 9 (_not_ account by account or using pulseaudio, just a
global change so that soundcard modules are always loaded in the order I
define). Googling was of no use (no threads where someone answers the
original question in a meaningful way). 

Would someone please enlighten me??

This is what the release notes have to say:

"The system-config-soundcard utility has been removed, due to numerous
legacy design and implementation issues. Modern technologies, including
udev and the HAL, have made certain sound cards work out of the box. Any
sound card not working out of the box should be reported as a bug.
Preferences can still be fine-tuned within the desktop environment,
using, among others, the PulseAudio tools."

Which does not seem to include what I need. 

I find some "magic" in /etc/modprobe.d/modprobe.conf.dist. Who writes it
there? What do I need to do to change the order?

Lately I keep bumping into "downgrades" of functionality like this one.
It is becoming more and more difficult to just configure things. I'm
really getting frustrated. Lots of wasted time for doing what used to be
"easy". 

-- Fernando

[Fernando Lopez-Lezcano]

On Tue, 2008-09-16 at 10:23 -0700, Fernando Lopez-Lezcano wrote:
>  I'm trying to find out how to change the default order of the
> sound
>  cards in Fedora 9 (_not_ account by account or using pulseaudio, just a
>  global change so that soundcard modules are always loaded in the order I
>  define). Googling was of no use (no threads where someone answers the
>  original question in a meaningful way).  
And furthermore, the ordering of the cards appears to be
non-deterministic!! That is, in a machine with two sound cards, repeated
reboots end up with different cards in the first slot! How can that be?
Something is throwing dice to select the card??

End result, the machine is unusable if you have more than one soundcard
on it (unless you don't mind sound coming out of different soundcards
randomly). And there is no way (out of the box) to define which one is
first. Hard to believe.  

>  Would someone please enlighten me?? 
Got one answer of the list pointing to:

  http://alsa.opensrc.org/index.php/MultipleCards

Adding:
----
options snd slots=snd_ice1712
alias snd-card-0 snd_ice1712
----
to /etc/modprobe.d/sound ends up with no cards loaded at all after a
reboot. Doing:
----
alias snd-card-0 snd_ice1712
options snd-ice1712 index=0
----
instead also ends up with no drivers loaded for sound, nice... I could,
of course, be doing something dumb. Does anyone have a working
configuration for selecting the order of sound cards using this method?
What is it exactly you changed?

Anyway. 

The loading of the kernel modules is now handled by udev. The
incantation in the current default modprobe configuration file for
loading soundcard drivers has a reference to an environment variable
that I can't find anywhere in /etc or /usr. Another mystery.

Further searches yielded:

  http://alsa.opensrc.org/index.php/Udev

as a possible solution. A modification of the script posted there seems
to work just fine. I'm attaching it and the special rules that need to
be included. The sound card pci id is used to define which card is the
first card. It would make more sense to look up the id by name (and read
a configuration file from somewhere that has the information needed),
instead of hard coding it in the script. But well, at least this makes
our machines usable. 

Now, is anyone out there in Fedora world expecting a Fedora 9 user that
has two soundcards and wants to use one of them as the primary card and
the other as the secondary to figure this out by him/herself?? (this is
a standard setup if you don't use the mobo soundcard because you need
better quality). 

-- Fernando

[Arnaud Gomes-do-Vale]

Fernando Lopez-Lezcano <nando(a)ccrma.Stanford.EDU&gt; writes:

>  And furthermore, the ordering of the cards appears to be
>  non-deterministic!! That is, in a machine with two sound cards, repeated
>  reboots end up with different cards in the first slot! How can that be?
>  Something is throwing dice to select the card?? 
I had this kind of problem with a M-Audio USB MIDI interface. This
interface works only when it has been fed its firmware by the
computer. So on the first boot, it was detected last, after the init
scripts had a chance to upload the formware, whereas on subsequent
reboots, the firmware was already there and the interface was detected
before the PCI sound card.

-- 
Arnaud

[Fernando Lopez-Lezcano]

On Thu, 2008-09-18 at 00:20 +0200, Arnaud Gomes-do-Vale wrote:
>  Fernando Lopez-Lezcano <nando(a)ccrma.Stanford.EDU&gt; writes:
>  
>  > And furthermore, the ordering of the cards appears to be
>  > non-deterministic!! That is, in a machine with two sound cards, repeated
>  > reboots end up with different cards in the first slot! How can that be?
>  > Something is throwing dice to select the card??
>  
>  I had this kind of problem with a M-Audio USB MIDI interface. This
>  interface works only when it has been fed its firmware by the
>  computer. So on the first boot, it was detected last, after the init
>  scripts had a chance to upload the formware, whereas on subsequent
>  reboots, the firmware was already there and the interface was detected
>  before the PCI sound card. 
That makes sense, of course. 

I don't know what could have that effect on pci cards (I did not reboot
too many times but it seemed random and certainly not repeatable)...
-- Fernando

[Leszek Matok]

Dnia 2008-09-17, o godz. 16:16:33 Fernando Lopez-Lezcano
<nando(a)ccrma.Stanford.EDU&gt; napisał(a):

>  I don't know what could have that effect on pci cards (I did not
> reboot
>  too many times but it seemed random and certainly not repeatable)... 
I have 2 PCI
cards (one on-board) in this machine (F9) plus a USB camera with a
microphone.

Somehow the 3 "cards" never change their order. I know of only one setting
being alias+index in /etc/modprobe.conf (which was set up by
system-config-soundcard, I still have it installed).

The exact config is:
options snd cards_limit=8
alias snd-card-0 snd-ens1371
options snd-ens1371 index=0
alias snd-card-1 snd-hda-intel
options snd-hda-intel index=1
alias snd-card-7 snd-usb-audio
options snd-usb-audio index=7

And it does work every time.

So maybe you have a PCI card needing firmware? :)

Lam

[Nils Philippsen]

On Thu, 2008-09-18 at 22:03 +0200, Leszek Matok wrote:
>  Dnia 2008-09-17, o godz. 16:16:33 Fernando Lopez-Lezcano
>  <nando(a)ccrma.Stanford.EDU&gt; napisał(a):
>  
>  > I don't know what could have that effect on pci cards (I did not reboot
>  > too many times but it seemed random and certainly not repeatable)...
>  I have 2 PCI cards (one on-board) in this machine (F9) plus a USB camera with a
>  microphone.
>  
>  Somehow the 3 "cards" never change their order. I know of only one setting
>  being alias+index in /etc/modprobe.conf (which was set up by
>  system-config-soundcard, I still have it installed).
>  
>  The exact config is:
>  options snd cards_limit=8
>  alias snd-card-0 snd-ens1371
>  options snd-ens1371 index=0
>  alias snd-card-1 snd-hda-intel
>  options snd-hda-intel index=1
>  alias snd-card-7 snd-usb-audio
>  options snd-usb-audio index=7
>  
>  And it does work every time.
>  
>  So maybe you have a PCI card needing firmware? :) 
Think of two cards/chips with the same driver, there's no way to enforce
order via modprobe.conf in that constellation.

Nils
-- 
Nils Philippsen      "Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase 
Red Hat               a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty
nils(a)redhat.com       nor Safety."  --  Benjamin Franklin, 1759
PGP fingerprint:      C4A8 9474 5C4C ADE3 2B8F  656D 47D8 9B65 6951 3011

[Janina Sajka]

Arnaud Gomes-do-Vale writes:
>  Fernando Lopez-Lezcano <nando(a)ccrma.Stanford.EDU&gt; writes:
>  
>  > And furthermore, the ordering of the cards appears to be
>  > non-deterministic!! That is, in a machine with two sound cards, repeated
>  > reboots end up with different cards in the first slot! How can that be?
>  > Something is throwing dice to select the card??
>  
>  I had this kind of problem with a M-Audio USB MIDI interface. This
>  interface works only when it has been fed its firmware by the
>  computer. So on the first boot, it was detected last, after the init
>  scripts had a chance to upload the formware, whereas on subsequent
>  reboots, the firmware was already there and the interface was detected
>  before the PCI sound card.
>   
I have three cards on two of my machines. I solved this problem by
reintroducing /etc/modprobe.conf onto those systems, using the classic
alsa syntax to order my cards the way I want them ordered.

Probably not the optimal solution vis a vis where Fedora is heading, but
it works for now at least.

Janina

>  -- 
>  Arnaud
>  
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-- 

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