Soundblaster Audigy SE (snd-ca0106) [discontinued]

[Guest TobiasBXL]

[EDIT]

I HAVE GIVEN UP SOLVING THIS PROBLEM. SEE BELOW FOR MORE INFORMATION.

[/EDIT]

 

Hi everybody,

 

I have spent the saturday trying to get a Soundblaster Audigy SE to work in Mandriva 2006.0 Official (Powerpack Installation). All I can get with the module snd-ca0106 that Mandriva loads is a static random noise on the speaker. I tried other Creative modules but they don't load.

 

I went to the ALSA page and la voilà: the card is supported in ALSA 1.0.11 and up. A shame though that this is an ALSA release that didn't even make it into Mandriva Cooker yet. Mandriva 2006.0 ships with Linux 2.6.12 which includes an older version of ALSA.

What should I do now?

 

There seem to be two options:

 

Option 1

 

Keep 2.6.12 from Mandriva and

 

Download alsa-driver

Download also-lib

Download alsa-oss

Download alsa-util

 

and install them from source, using checkinstall in the process.

 

Using alsa-driver requires to deactivate native kernel alsa support in the Mandriva kernel. A custom kernel is necessary, configured and compiled from the Mandriva kernel sources.

 

So I installed the kernel source next to my Mandriva kernel.

 

Let's see whether we can already compile alsa-driver before having to go through all the trouble to build a custom kernel:

 

./configure --with-cards=ca0106 --with-sequencer=yes --with-oss=yes

 

After configuring alsa-driver for my card I ran into a problem when running make though:

 

...
make[1]: Entering directory `/usr/src/linux-2.6.12-15mdk'

 WARNING: Symbol version dump /usr/src/linux-2.6.12-15mdk/Module.symvers
	   is missing; modules will have no dependencies and modversions.
...

 

I cannot find that file, it does not exist. I can't seem to find it on the Web.

 

Why isn't this in the kernel sources from Mandriva. Could it be that it has been renamed by Mandriva?

 

Option 2

 

Use the official Linux Kernel sources from kernel.org in a version that includes ALSA 1.0.11rc2 or greater.

 

From the changelog of 2.6.16-rc2:

 

...

commit be3cd57aa65c366e479d6a21a5d49a08117b5d77

Author: James Courtier-Dutton <James@superbug.co.uk>

Date: Mon Jan 9 21:20:56 2006 +0100

 

[ALSA] snd-ca0106: Fixed ALSA bug#1600

 

Modules: CA0106 driver

 

Description:

Shuttle XPC SD11G5 which has an onboard Creative Labs

Sound Blaster Live! 24-bit EAX

high-definition 7.1 audio processor'.

Fixes ALSA bug#1600

 

Signed-off-by: James Courtier-Dutton <James@superbug.co.uk>

...

 

Is this an option?

 

Will a Vanilla kernel run a Mandriva box without breaking features (USB hotplugging / NVIDIA ...)?

 

Where can I get information on the patches Mandriva applies to the Vanilla sources?

 

Any help on this is greatly appreciated. If you happen to know a more convenient way to get my crappy card running in 2006.0 other than to install ALSA manually then PLEASE let me know, will you? :huh:

 

regards,

Tobias

Edited February 12, 2006 by TobiasBXL

[chalex20]

There seem to be two options:

 

Option 1

 

Keep 2.6.12 from Mandriva and

 

Download alsa-driver

Download also-lib

Download alsa-oss

Download alsa-util

 

Option 2

 

Use the official Linux Kernel sources from kernel.org in a version that includes ALSA 1.0.11rc2 or greater.

 

 

Is this an option?

 

Will a Vanilla kernel run a Mandriva box without breaking features (USB hotplugging / NVIDIA ...)?

 

Where can I get information on the patches Mandriva applies to the Vanilla sources?

 

Any help on this is greatly appreciated. If you happen to know a more convenient way to get my crappy card running in 2006.0 other than to install ALSA manually then PLEASE let me know, will you? :huh:

 

regards,

Tobias

 

The second options is much less preferable than first - Mandriva's kernel is heavily patched, and you risk breaking a lot of things using vanilla kernel.

 

There are several additional options :

- Compile new alsa drivers by hand; copy them exactly over the old ones; re-start "alsa" and "sound" services or reboot

- Compile new alsa drivers by hand; copy them into some dedicated place within /lib/modules/<your_kernel_version>; remove the old drivers manually; restart "alsa" and "sound" services or reboot

- Get yourself a source RPM for "multimedia" kernel from cooker, recompile and install it; it should contain newer version of ALSA;

- Tweak the config spec of Mandriva kernel source RPM ( not kernel-source-..., but rather kernel-2.6...src.rpm ), so that it fetch newer ALSA; rebuild it and reinstall it.

[ffi]

Or look here ftp://ftp.surfnet.nl/pub/os/Linux/distr/M.../media/contrib/ for a mandriva rpm of 2.6.16-rc2, ;)

 

I want to fix my sound problems to but can´t get it to work though, nvidia drivers won´t compile, anyway you might have more luck....

[scarecrow]

That kernel (2.6.16rc2) is both very beta, and vanilla (notice the "linus" argument)... most likely it will create way more problems than the ones it will resolve, under a normal (= not Cooker) mandy installation.

Easier is installing the latest ALSA rpm's, although an even better solution is getting rid of any Creative hardware you've got!

Edited February 11, 2006 by scarecrow

[Guest TobiasBXL]

Hi all,

 

The second options is much less preferable than first - Mandriva's kernel is heavily patched, and you risk breaking a lot of things using vanilla kernel.

 

I agree. But there are some issues with the alternatives. I'll show you:

 

There are several additional options :

- Compile new alsa drivers by hand; copy them exactly over the old ones; re-start "alsa" and "sound" services or reboot

- Compile new alsa drivers by hand; copy them into some dedicated place within /lib/modules/<your_kernel_version>; remove the old drivers manually; restart "alsa" and "sound" services or reboot

 

This is a nightmare! ;) Imagine what happens when you do an kernel update! Module carnage! All changes lost and maybe the newer ALSA doesn't work with the older Mandriva kernel. There has to be a cleaner way.

 

- Get yourself a source RPM for "multimedia" kernel from cooker, recompile and install it; it should contain newer version of ALSA;

 

I'm afraid the newest version of ALSA included in cooker kernels is ALSA 1.0.10 (from Linux 2.6.15) but I need at least 1.0.11rc2 as I already pointed out at the top. I doublechecked this before posting. 1.0.11rc2 got included in Linux 2.6.16rc2, so any cooker kernel packages are not an option.

 

- Tweak the config spec of Mandriva kernel source RPM ( not kernel-source-..., but rather kernel-2.6...src.rpm ), so that it fetch newer ALSA; rebuild it and reinstall it.

 

I don't know whether is safe, basically the same problem as above. Each kernel version has been tested to run a specific ALSA version. ALSA is more than just a couple of specific drivers that get compiled into the kernel/into modules one by one for each sound device type. A good part of the ALSA sources is common for all drivers and defines interfaces that may or may not change in between ALSA versions, maybe even to adapt changes in the way device drivers operate in newer Linux kernel versions. This is certainly to be error-prone.

 

You are right though as there is an additional option that should work:

 

Modify the Mandriva sources, in specific the device driver ca0106 for the Audigy SE by patching the diff from the newer ALSA version against the single driver and leave the rest alone. As far as I understand the bugtraq entry concerning the ca0106 chipset on the ALSA page, the error in the driver can be isolated to the driver itself, so the source file(s) (it's probably just one file and maybe a C header file) for this specific driver should be interchangeable without problem.

 

I could then build a new Mandriva kernel from these sources using the original Mandriva kernel configuration with just one change and build a new kernel like usual. The rest of the system wouldn't be touched and the only thing to look out for would be kernel patches from Mandriva. I'd have to redo the whole process with the Mandriva sources everytime a new kernel version is available in URPMI. But otherwise the system would remain untouched and I'd only need to change one or two source files.

 

Does this work or am I ignoring something?

 

[EDIT]

I just checked. ALSA 1.0.11rc2 includes a directory with a couple of C files, header files and the corresponding MAKE file for the CA0106 driver. So far I haven't found any references to things not included in older ALSA versions, reading through the sources. I'll just copy / diff / patch these over the Mandrake kernel sources and compile my own kernel. That should work...

[/EDIT]

 

[EDIT2]

I just made the changes and I am now busy building the kernel and the modules. The make process already went through the sound/pci directory without a hassle, so I am assuming that snd_ca0106 has been built without a problem. So far so good... Let's hope the damn card works afterwards...

[/EDIT2]

 

[EDIT3]

No, the ca0106 files won't compile like that. I'll have to check again.

[/EDIT3]

 

Or look here ftp://ftp.surfnet.nl/pub/os/Linux/distr/M.../media/contrib/ for a mandriva rpm of 2.6.16-rc2, ;)

 

I want to fix my sound problems to but can´t get it to work though, nvidia drivers won´t compile, anyway you might have more luck....

 

This is my fallback option when nothing else will work. Apart from trading the card against another ;-)

 

Maybe I'll try this up front to check whether the card actually works with ALSA 1.0.11rc2 as included in this kernel. Thanks for the link!

 

That kernel (2.6.16rc2) is both very beta, and vanilla (notice the "linus" argument)... most likely it will create way more problems than the ones it will resolve, under a normal (= not Cooker) mandy installation.

Easier is installing the latest ALSA rpm's, although an even better solution is getting rid of any Creative hardware you've got!

 

What are "ALSA rpm's" are supposed to be? ;) There are no separate ALSA rpms for the drivers anymore as the drivers are now included in the kernel which has the drawback that you can't mix older kernels with newer ALSA drivers anymore without tweaking the kernel.

 

I'd have to compile a kernel WITHOUT the builtin ALSA modules, compile the newest ALSA from source (which kind of fails due to the missing file error above) and start ALSA with an INIT script while booting as it has been the case before ALSA got included into the kernel.

 

Are there alsa-driver packages for Mandriva? Because I haven't found any. In Cooker?

 

What about the /usr/src/linux-2.6.12-15mdk/Module.symvers error? I'm not willing to ignore this as module dependencies won't work while booting when this isn't solved. Any clues?

 

Does any of you know where to get the patches Mandriva runs against the Vanilla sources in order to make Mandriva sources from Vanilla sources? Another far fetched option would be to run these patches against a 2.6.16-rc2 source tree, although I admit this is the ultimate jeopardy bet.

 

Thanks and regards,

Tobias

Edited February 12, 2006 by TobiasBXL

[Guest TobiasBXL]

Hi everybody,

 

I've given up on the Audigy SE. I can't isolate the ca0106 driver and integrate it with the current Mandriva sources. Part of the problem is that Mandriva kernels are not interchangeable with Vanilla kernels which really sucks. Negative karma points for Mandriva there.

 

I'm also not willing to mess with ALSA and replace the Mandriva ALSA parts in the kernel with current ALSA builds that I have to do myself. This just doesn't feel safe with system updates and all. The system has to stay clean in order for my parents to deal with it.

 

I'll return the Audigy SE to the store and trade in for a Hercules card that I already found to be working in the ALSA matrix.

 

I've already invested too much time just to make a stupid soundcard work.

 

This has been a good lesson to check hardware before buying it.

 

regards,

Tobias

Edited February 12, 2006 by TobiasBXL