Soundcards not recognized after upgrade

[terppaderppa]

Greetings!

The subject pretty much says it all: I upgraded from 11.04 to 11.10 and the system no more recognises neither my onboard soundcard nor my USB soundcard no matter if the USB card is plugged in or not before booting or after it. The USB card is a Lead Audio DAC and supposedly really generic. It seems people have had this problem with earlier upgrades also, so I tried some solutions that have worked previously, all to no avail.

Alsa information script output:

cat: /proc/asound/version: No such file or directory
grep: /proc/asound/cards: No such file or directory
cat: /proc/asound/cards: No such file or directory
cat: /proc/asound/modules: No such file or directory
grep: /proc/asound/cards: No such file or directory
/sbin/alsactl: save_state:1519: No soundcards found...                                                                                                              
cat: /tmp/alsa-info.KD0sEA9yD1/alsactl.tmp: No such file or directory

aplay -l:

aplay -l
aplay: device_list:240: no soundcards found...

lspci -v:

00:14.2 Audio device: ATI Technologies Inc SBx00 Azalia (Intel HDA) (rev 40)
    Subsystem: ATI Technologies Inc SBx00 Azalia (Intel HDA)
    Flags: bus master, slow devsel, latency 64, IRQ 10
    Memory at fcef4000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
    Capabilities: <access denied>
    Kernel modules: snd-hda-intel

05:00.1 Audio device: nVidia Corporation High Definition Audio Controller (rev a1)
    Subsystem: nVidia Corporation Device 072e
    Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 7
    Memory at fe97c000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
    Capabilities: <access denied>
    Kernel modules: snd-hda-intel

Also

find /lib/modules/`uname -r` | grep snd

throws a long list of items at me.

I'm happy to provide more information, though right now I have no idea what I should be looking for. Any help will be appreciated.

[doctordruidphd]

Re: Soundcards not recognized after upgrade

First, you have rebooted since the upgrade, right?

Next, see what this does:

alsactl init

[terppaderppa]

Re: Soundcards not recognized after upgrade

First, you have rebooted since the upgrade, right?

Sure thing, several times.

Next, see what this does:

alsactl init

alsactl: init:1743: No soundcards found...

[doctordruidphd]

Re: Soundcards not recognized after upgrade

Looks like some part of alsa is missing:

dpkg-query -l alsa*

[terppaderppa]

Re: Soundcards not recognized after upgrade

Looks like some part of alsa is missing:

dpkg-query -l alsa*

Says the following:

No packages found matching alsa-info.sh.

[doctordruidphd]

Re: Soundcards not recognized after upgrade

That's not good, but it does explain.
One last thing to try before reinstalling alsa:

dpkg --get-selections | grep alsa

[terppaderppa]

Re: Soundcards not recognized after upgrade

That's not good, but it does explain.
One last thing to try before reinstalling alsa:

dpkg --get-selections | grep alsa

Output follows:

alsa-base                    install
alsa-tools                   install
alsa-tools-gui                 install
alsa-utils                   install
bluez-alsa                   install
gstreamer0.10-alsa               install
libclalsadrv2                  install
libsdl1.2debian-alsa              install
tuxguitar-alsa                 install

[doctordruidphd]

Re: Soundcards not recognized after upgrade

Huh! If dpkg-query is saying the packages aren't installed, and get-selections is saying they are, something is seriously nuts.

Well I guess at this point try

sudo apt-get install --reinstall alsa-base alsa-tools alsa-utils

That should at least get your cards back. If ti works, then reinstall the rest of those packages.

[terppaderppa]

Re: Soundcards not recognized after upgrade

Huh! If dpkg-query is saying the packages aren't installed, and get-selections is saying they are, something is seriously nuts.

Well I guess at this point try

sudo apt-get install --reinstall alsa-base alsa-tools alsa-utils

That should at least get your cards back. If ti works, then reinstall the rest of those packages.

I did that and rebooted but no results. Every aforementioned command still gives the same output as before.

[doctordruidphd]

Re: Soundcards not recognized after upgrade

Actually, looking back at your lspci, we have a similar internal audio card. My lspci looks like:

00:10.1 Audio device: nVidia Corporation MCP51 High Definition Audio (rev a2)
Subsystem: Dell Device 0249
Flags: bus master, 66MHz, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 21
Memory at efff4000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
Capabilities: <access denied>
Kernel driver in use: HDA Intel
Kernel modules: snd-hda-intel

Yours does not have a "kernel driver in use" line, which means the kernel has not detected your audio card.
So the problem is likely not with alsa itself. I'm not sure how to debug the kernel driver for this. Did you specify
some startup parameters in the kernel line in your old system, such as memory settings?

You could try:

sudo dpkg-reconfigure linux-image-`uname -r`

maybe that will give some error message. Also check /var/log/boot.log and dmesg for errors related to the cards.

Sorry I don't know exactly what is going on here. Your system looks OK, except that the kernel doesn't see your cards.
I guess another thing to try is searching the ubuntu forum for sda-hda-intel . I know a while back there were problems
with this driver, but I thought they had been fixed by now.

[terppaderppa]

Re: Soundcards not recognized after upgrade

Actually, looking back at your lspci, we have a similar internal audio card. My lspci looks like:

00:10.1 Audio device: nVidia Corporation MCP51 High Definition Audio (rev a2)
Subsystem: Dell Device 0249
Flags: bus master, 66MHz, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 21
Memory at efff4000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
Capabilities: <access denied>
Kernel driver in use: HDA Intel
Kernel modules: snd-hda-intel

Yours does not have a "kernel driver in use" line, which means the kernel has not detected your audio card.
So the problem is likely not with alsa itself. I'm not sure how to debug the kernel driver for this. Did you specify
some startup parameters in the kernel line in your old system, such as memory settings?

You could try:

sudo dpkg-reconfigure linux-image-`uname -r`

maybe that will give some error message. Also check /var/log/boot.log and dmesg for errors related to the cards.

Sorry I don't know exactly what is going on here. Your system looks OK, except that the kernel doesn't see your cards.
I guess another thing to try is searching the ubuntu forum for sda-hda-intel . I know a while back there were problems
with this driver, but I thought they had been fixed by now.

No errors or anything that could outline the problem, but I'll be browsing the Ubuntu forum for a while and hope I'll find a solution. Anyway, thank you for your kind effort, I really appreciate it!

Edit: The issue was solved by doing the following:

sudo apt-get remove --purge alsa-base
sudo apt-get remove --purge pulseaudio
sudo apt-get install alsa-base
sudo apt-get install pulseaudio
sudo alsa force-reload

...as advised in http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1316634