ThinkPad microphone not working

[suvayu ali]

Hey Stan,

I found something interesting, comments are below.

On Sat, Apr 14, 2012 at 17:06, stan <gryt2 at q.com> wrote:
>
> This is a long shot, but it might be that alsa has sorted your sound
> devices in a different order on boot.  It sounds like it thinks your
> acpi might be a sound device.
>
> Try
> aplay -l
> to see if it has your actual sound device in position 0.  Everything
> looks like it, but ...
>

Things look in order.

$ aplay -l
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: Intel [HDA Intel], device 0: CONEXANT Analog [CONEXANT Analog]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: Intel [HDA Intel], device 3: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

> Also try booting to an older kernel (from before the problem), if you
> have one.
>

I had tried this with no success. If it was a driver issue booting to a
kernel from before the problem started should have worked, but it
didn't.. But then I tried an old F15 Live USB (kernel 2.6.38), and it
works! So my hardware is actually okay. :)

It seems to me some bad settings are being cached somewhere; which would
also explain why booting to an older kernel also fails. Do you have any
ideas where these might be?

> Maybe check the install date of alsa-lib if it is possible? Should be
> in the modification time for /usr/lib[64]/libasound*.  On my system
> (F17), libasound package was compiled on Feb 1.
>

$ sudo yum history list alsa-lib
ID     | Login user               | Date and time    | Action(s)      | Altered
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
   525 | Suvayu Ali <jallad>      | 2012-02-15 23:21 | Update         |   18
   370 | System <unset>           | 2011-10-22 23:30 | E, I, O, U     | 2176

This dates back 2 months. so I would say its okay on that front.

>> Hopefully I won't have
>> problems with warranty since I bought this in Canada, and now I am in
>> Switzerland. :-|
>
> Surely they handle this case gracefully in these days of peripatetic
> workers.

The world is like a "global village" these days. ;)

-- 
Suvayu

Open source is the future. It sets us free.