alsa woes, acer aspire one -- SOLVED

[dep]

okay, am running 8.04 on this little machine because if there's a way to get 8.10 with kde-3.5.x i can't find it.

problem is, there are issues with the aspire one 150 and alsa <1.0.18. and kubuntu 8.04 ships alsa 1.0.16.

easy enough, normally, one would think. just get and install new alsa. so i apt-get removed all the alsa packages, then got the source for and installed new alsa from source. (puzzlingly, the ubuntu packages for alsa do not correspond with the alsa source packages -- there is no "alsa-base" from alsa, for instance.) anyway, i built and installed all the alsa packages, building against the running kernel uneventfully. yet:

dep@depnetbook:~$ cat /proc/asound/version
Advanced Linux Sound Architecture Driver Version 1.0.16.
Compiled on Nov 25 2008 for kernel 2.6.24-22-generic (SMP).

so it seems that i need to root out something and kill it. the above, of course, was after rebooting.

alsamixer reports everything is unmuted, and speaker-test reports:
speaker-test 1.0.19

Playback device is default
Stream parameters are 48000Hz, S16_LE, 1 channels
Using 16 octaves of pink noise
Rate set to 48000Hz (requested 48000Hz)
Buffer size range from 2048 to 8192
Period size range from 1024 to 1024
Using max buffer size 8192
Periods = 4
was set period_size = 1024
was set buffer_size = 8192
0 - Front Left
Time per period = 2.831910
0 - Front Left
Time per period = 2.986759
0 - Front Left
. . . etc.

levels are set at 75 percent across the board.

i have tried the recipe offered here:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AspireOne#Install Ubuntu Hardy Heron (8.04.1) on the Acer Aspire One

i have made the user a member of the audio group.

still no sound.

is not a hardware problem -- works fine under xp, also does provide sound, with limitations, when booted from 8.04 live cd.

so . . .

is there a way to eliminate all vestiges of alsa 1.0.16 short of burning a new kernel?

is there a way to install 8.10 while retaining kde-3.5.10?

anything obvious i'm missing in the sound configuration?

thanks.

[dep]

solution

i got and ran the script found here:

http://www.stchman.com/tools/alsa/alsa_setup.sh

i then edited it to get the newest sources, which involves editing the appropriate lines to read:
wget ftp://ftp.alsa-project.org/pub/drive...1.0.19.tar.bz2
wget ftp://ftp.alsa-project.org/pub/lib/a...1.0.19.tar.bz2
wget ftp://ftp.alsa-project.org/pub/utils...1.0.19.tar.bz2

and the model line to:
sudo echo "options snd-hda-intel model=acer-aspire" >> /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base

i thought i had done everything in the script, but apparently not, in that sound now works.

it should be noted that the deebian package system is not modified, so it has no idea the new stuff is installed. whether the upgrade would survive a kernel revision is unknown to me.

[Snowhog]

Re: alsa woes, acer aspire one -- SOLVED

As to when a new kernel is installed.

I went through this in 8.04. Keep your notes as to the alsa_setup.sh procedure, as you are likely to need to go through it again when a new kernel is installed.