HOWTO: Make speakers/headphones work on ICH7 rev.2 (Fujitsu T4210)

[bombadier337]

Wow, it took me 3 and half days to work through this but I finally got it. A little background...

On a Fujitsu T4210(my laptop, but others have this problem as well) and a default Edgy installation, sound does not work on the speakers, and only comes out of the headphone jack. This is related to the alsa version that ships with Edgy (1.0.12rc3). I found this issue in several forums, and several said to try compiling the 1.0.13 alsa drivers. I compiled everything and installed it, and it said "no soundcard found" on everything. Alsa didn't see my card at all. I thought I had done something wrong (I've only been an Ubuntu user for 2 months), so I fought with it for a long time, eventually reformatted and tried again. Same thing. I then tried compiling older drivers and they saw my soundcard.
I knew I wasn't compiling it wrong so I looked through the alsa bugtracker and found that the problem had been fixed about a week ago in Mercurial. This is the first thing I've written like this, but I hope this will help someone who's suffering as much as I have been. On to the how-to...

1. Install necessary build tools
sudo apt-get install build-essential linux-headers-generic libncurses5-dev automake autoconf mercurial

2. Go to www.alsa-project.org and download the 1.0.13 version of the library and utilities to your home directory and untar them.

3. Download the repositories for the mercurial builds of alsa-driver and alsa-kernel.

hg clone http://hg-mirror.alsa-project.org/alsa-driver alsa-driver
hg clone http://hg-mirror.alsa-project.org/alsa-kernel alsa-kernel

4. Go into the alsa-driver in your home directory and run hgcompile.

cd alsa-driver
sudo ./hgcompile

This will build the newest version of the alsa-driver. Now install it using:

sudo make install

6. Change directories to the untarred library directory. In that directory run

./configure
make
sudo make install

to install the 1.0.13 release version of the alsa driver.

7. Change directories to the untarred utilities directory, and in that directory run

./configure
make
sudo make install

8. Configure alsa

sudo alsaconf

Select your soundcard (in my case it was the first one) and hit the default option on everything else.

9. Load the new alsa module into the kernel.

sudo /etc/init.d/alsasound reload

10. At this point you should receive messages about a soundcard being removed, as well as messages about a new soundcard being installed. At this point, I restarted, to hear the wonderful Ubuntu logoff noise for the first time out of my speakers.

Upon reboot, there should be no problems, and audio should continue to work.

If I typed anything wrong I apoligize, and if you correct me I'll gladly change this. I truly hope this will help somebody, this took me so long to get to work.

Peace.

[rax_m]

Hi,

Glad you´ve got your sounds working...
I´ve been trying to follow your guide, and it was going well for a while..

First issue: I had to run
¨hg clone http://hg-mirror.alsa-project.org/alsa-kernel alsa-kernel¨ twice before it actually downloaded these for some reason :/
However i´m guessing since it worked the second time, it shouldn´t be a problem.

Second issue:
When I try to ¨make¨ the utilities packages I get the following error:
...
checking for ALSA CFLAGS...
checking for ALSA LDFLAGS... -lasound -lm -ldl -lpthread
checking for libasound headers version >= 1.0.12... found.
checking for snd_ctl_open in -lasound... yes
checking how to run the C preprocessor... gcc -E
checking for egrep... grep -E
checking for ANSI C header files... yes
checking for initscr in -lncurses... no
checking for initscr in -lcurses... no
configure: error: this packages requires a curses library

Which curses library do i install?

I´ve got the same hda-intel ICH7 (rev2) sound card, but it´s on a Toshiba P100-429.

Any help would be great..

PS I´m not a total noob, but I probably don´t understand the what some of these libraries do

Thanks
Rax

[diogodpc]

Hi rax,

I ran into the same message.
"sudo apt-get install libncurses5-dev" did the trick for me.

Thanks bombadier337 everything worked great! (I've an Asus F3JC)

cheers

[bombadier337]

Oops, I put the wrong curses library in the guide, its fixed now. Thanks for pointing that out!

[GStubbs43]

Hi all!

When I do

sudo ./hgcompile

I get:

checking for kernel linux/version.h... no
The file /usr/src/linux/include/linux/version.h does not exist.
Please install the package with full kernel sources for your distribution
or use --with-kernel=dir option to specify another directory with kernel
sources (default is /usr/src/linux).

Any ideas?

[bombadier337]

run

sudo apt-get install linux-headers-generic

if your running a standard edgy install
if for some reason that still doesn't work, try running this

sudo apt-get install linux-headers-386

That oughtta fix it.

Peace.

[GStubbs43]

Thanks Bombadier, that worked great! I now only have sound coming out of what I want it to! Thanks!

[rax_m]

Hi

Thanks for the tip .. I managed to install the libcurses now..

however when I then run the reload command i get the following:

>>> /etc$ sudo /etc/init.d/alsasound reload
Shutting down sound driver: /usr/sbin/alsactl: save_state:1254: No soundcards found...
ERROR: Module snd_timer is in use
ERROR: Module snd is in use by snd_timer
done
ALSA driver is already running.

Any ideas?

I may have removed some essential lines from some of my module files in the past.. unfortunately i can´t remember what they were (oops.. stupid i know, but this was a few weeks ago)

Thanks again
Rax

[iorbell]

Just wanted to say thanks for this guide - it successfully overcame the audio problems I was having with Edgy and a new Intel HD mobo - and worked exactly as indicated above. The community support is a great example of why I choose Ubuntu over any other Linux distro...

[bombadier337]

Originally Posted by rax_m Hi Thanks for the tip .. I managed to install the libcurses now.. however when I then run the reload command i get the following: >>> /etc$ sudo /etc/init.d/alsasound reload Shutting down sound driver: /usr/sbin/alsactl: save_state:1254: No soundcards found... ERROR: Module snd_timer is in use ERROR: Module snd is in use by snd_timer done ALSA driver is already running. Any ideas? I may have removed some essential lines from some of my module files in the past.. unfortunately i can´t remember what they were (oops.. stupid i know, but this was a few weeks ago) Thanks again Rax

I'm not too sure about that one, but if you reboot it should reload all the modules and then pick up the new snd-hda-intel module. You can check the version of the alsa by running

$ cat /proc/asound/version

If it says 1.0.13 and shows the date you compiled the modules, then you do have the new modules in there. If sound still doesn't work after rebooting, all I can think of is making sure the library is installed correctly.