[lug] Sound driver

[D. Stimits]

Elyse Grasso wrote:

> On Monday 10 February 2003 01:00 pm, D. Stimits wrote:
>
> >Elyse Grasso wrote:
> >
> >
> >>Here's a weird one.
> >>
> >>When I boot my laptop at work, the sound system always comes up. KDE
> >>plays its little tune when I log in, sounds on websites work, etc.
> >>
> >>When I boot it at home, the sound system never comes up. No tune, no
> >>sounds on websites. Soundcard detection acts like it works, but no
> >>sounds come out if I click the test button.
> >>
> >>I make no changes to the setup: I just shutdown the laptop at work
>
> and
>
> >>plug it in at home and start it up.
> >>
> >>There are ethernet connections at both places. The modem card stays
>
> in
>
> >>the laptop at work and is found at boot time(so it doesn't get lost)
>
> and
>
> >>the failure at home happens regardless of whether the modem cable is
> >>plugged into the modem card.
> >>
> >>How does the laptop know that it is at home instead of at work and
>
> why
>
> >>should that affect the sound drivers?
> >>
> >>KRUD/RedHat 8.0
> >
> >In a plug-n-play system, where the BIOS is *not* set to "o/s is pnp
> >aware", irq gets assigned the same value each bootup by the BIOS
>
> itself.
>
> >If you have it set to IS pnp aware, then it is up to the o/s to do
>
> this
>
> >setup, and values change whenever different hardware is detected and
> >enabled. My guess is that your BIOS is set to IS pnp aware, and that
> >when no network is detected, that it bumps the irq to the next
>
> hardware
>
> >device, shifting it over on each PCI card that later gets enabled (and
> >most of the hardware involved, even if it is integrated, is PCI). On a
> >laptop I do not know if it is possible to set NOT pnp aware, but if it
> >is, do so. If not possible, then shifting the network to a PCI slot
>
> that
>
> >is initialized AFTER the sound card should make for consistent boots
>
> of
>
> >the sound card...trick is, you may not have peripherals that can have
> >swapped slots on a laptop.
> >
> >D. Stimits, stimits AT attbi DOT com
> >
> >_______________________________________________
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> >
> >
>
> Networks are detected at both places and the cards are reported in the
> same order at boot time. Shutting down and restarting the machine at
> home (eg overnight on the weekend) doesn't change anything.
>
> Based on people's suggestions, I'm suspecting DNS differences. It's the
> one thing I can think of that's definitely different between the 2
> sites. Though why anyone would make a sound driver that cares about dns
> and has no apparent way to configure it for local use only, escapes me.

The following might help you figure out exactly which difference is 
causing the problem. Save the copy of /proc/interrupts, /proc/pci, and 
the output of ifconfig and route -v. Do this once at work connected to 
the network, and once from home, without the network. Compare them, 
especially /proc/interrupts and /proc/pci (you can simply use "diff -c" 
on interrupts and pci). ifconfig will obviously show eth0 or whichever 
network device as not present on one of them, but the interrupt is 
important. On route -v, look for the default route, it should disappear 
when there is no outside connection, or at least be loopback...audio 
sometimes uses networking when going to/from X11, and if you have a 
static default route that points to the wrong (non-existent) place, this 
could cause audio to never reach the audio device.

D. Stimits, stimits AT attbi DOT com