On Wed, 19 Jan 2005 19:12:59 +0000 (UTC), JGH staggered into the Black
Sun and said:
> I'm trying to install debian sarge on an old Gateway 2100 Solo laptop
> But it doesn't think I have a sound card. The sound card is built-in.
>
> lspci:
> Host bridge: Intel Corp. 430MX - 82437MX Mob. System Ctrlr
> Bridge: Intel Corp. 430MX - 82371MX Mobile PCI I/O IDE
> PCI bridge: Intel Corp. 82380PB PCI to PCI Docking Bridge
> PCMCIA bridge: Cirrus Logic CL 6729 (rev ee)
> VGA compatible controller: Cirrus Logic GD 7548
> PCMCIA bridge: Cirrus Logic CL 6729 (rev ee)

Your sound card is not on the PCI bus. That means it's going to be a
PITA to autodetect, since ISA-bus soundcards are rare nowadays and
getting them to do the right thing was always a bit of a Black Art.

> I used to have suse on this laptop. It was using the sound blaster
> module, sb. But modprobe sb gave an error that there was "no such
> device".

sb takes parameters, eh? Kind of like so:

modprobe sb io=0x220 irq=5 dma=1 dma16=5

....modify for your setup. The io= and irq= should be OK, not sure about
the dma= ones though since I've never had a machine with an actual ISA SB
card in it. If your kernel was built with ISA Plug-n-Pray support, you
might be able to do:

modprobe sb isapnp=1

....and have everything work. Or not. You'll have to try it and see.

> I found a message in the google archives from someone who'd installed
> linux on a GW 2100 and they were using the alsa sound drivers. I ran
> alsaconf and it said there was no sound card detected.

ALSA is not really ready for prime time. Try OSS first.

> This is a very old laptop. Maybe debian sarge left something out that
> older machines need?

Nope. You've just got old hardware that requires some fiddling.

--
Matt G|There is no Darkness in Eternity/But only Light too dim for us to see
Brainbench MVP for Linux Admin / mail: TRAP + SPAN don't belong
http://www.brainbench.com / Hire me!
-----------------------------/ http://crow202.dyndns.org/~mhgraham/resume

Dances With Crows wrote in
> Your sound card is not on the PCI bus. That means it's going to be a
> PITA to autodetect, since ISA-bus soundcards are rare nowadays and
> getting them to do the right thing was always a bit of a Black Art.

So this whole ISA/PCI thing is applicable to laptops? I was kind of
hoping that wasn't the problem.


> sb takes parameters, eh? Kind of like so:
>
> modprobe sb io=0x220 irq=5 dma=1 dma16=5
>
> ...modify for your setup. The io= and irq= should be OK, not sure

No matter what options I pass to modprobe sb I get this error:

FATAL: Module off not found.

This started happening after I installed the alsa package.


Thanks for your help.

On Wed, 19 Jan 2005 20:25:27 +0000 (UTC), JGH staggered into the Black
Sun and said:
> Dances With Crows wrote in
>> Your sound card is not on the PCI bus. That means it's going to be a
>> PITA to autodetect, since ISA-bus soundcards are rare nowadays and
> So this whole ISA/PCI thing is applicable to laptops?

0. Laptops are x86s.
1. Laptops fight *ALL* the time.
2. The purpose of the laptop is to flip out and kill people.

....OK, maybe not, but point 0 holds.[0] x86 machines may still have a
number of devices on the ISA bus (PS/2 mouse and keyboard, maybe some
system management stuff.) Laptops are no exception.

>> modprobe sb io=0x220 irq=5 dma=1 dma16=5
>> ...modify for your setup. The io= and irq= should be OK, not sure
> No matter what options I pass to modprobe sb I get this error:
> FATAL: Module off not found.
> This started happening after I installed the alsa package.

?!? This is something totally dumb. The ALSA package almost certainly
edited /etc/modules.conf and inserted a few lines like so:

alias sb off

....which should just make any attempt to load the sb module fail
silently. If you alias something to "off", you shouldn't get a FATAL
from modprobe. Edit your modules.conf and repair the damage that ALSA
inflicted. Try again. Iterate until successful. If stressed out, bang
head on desk, obtain beer, drink beer.

[0] http://www.realultimatepower.net/index4.htm if you missed this
particular cliché.

--
Matt G|There is no Darkness in Eternity/But only Light too dim for us to see
Brainbench MVP for Linux Admin / mail: TRAP + SPAN don't belong
http://www.brainbench.com / Hire me!
-----------------------------/ http://crow202.dyndns.org/~mhgraham/resume

Dances With Crows wrote in
> ?!? This is something totally dumb. The ALSA package almost certainly
> edited /etc/modules.conf and inserted a few lines like so:
>
> alias sb off

You pegged that one. I couldn't figure out how to get rid of all that crap
so I reinstalled.

>
> head on desk, obtain beer, drink beer.
>
you're a genius! Thanks.

Anyway, parms you gave me for the modprobe sb worked too. Now I just have
to figure out how to get debian to load that module at boot. Thanks for
your help.

On 22 Jan 2005 17:44:03 CST, JGH staggered into the Black Sun and said:
> Dances With Crows wrote in
>> ?!? This is something totally dumb. The ALSA package almost
>> certainly edited /etc/modules.conf and inserted a few lines like so:
>> alias sb off
> You pegged that one. I couldn't figure out how to get rid of all that
> crap so I reinstalled.

OK, that's killing a fly with a bazooka, but whatever. Reinstallation
of the entire distro due to a bad config file is usually not the best
way to fix things.

>> bang head on desk, obtain beer, drink beer.
> you're a genius!

No, just passing on what I learned in college :-)

> Anyway, parms you gave me for the modprobe sb worked too. Now I just
> have to figure out how to get debian to load that module at boot.

Debian, unlike most other distros, doesn't have an /etc/init.d/local
script that's run at boot time. It should have a file called
/etc/modules.autoload or /etc/modules.autoload.d/kernel-2.n , which
should contain the names of modules, one per line. Put "sb" on one line
in there. Or put the line

alias char-major-14 sb
options sb irq=5 io=0x220 dma=1 dma2=5 # whatever the right numbers were

....in /etc/modules.conf , and every time you try to access the sound
device, sb will be loaded automagically with the right parameters.
Debian may generate the modules.conf file automagically from a bunch of
other files under /etc/modules.conf.d/ , so look there first. HTH,

--
Matt G|There is no Darkness in Eternity/But only Light too dim for us to see
Brainbench MVP for Linux Admin / mail: TRAP + SPAN don't belong
http://www.brainbench.com / Hire me!
-----------------------------/ http://crow202.dyndns.org/~mhgraham/resume

Dances With Crows wrote in
news:slrncva2lu.ddg.danSPANceswitTRAPhcrows@samant ha.crow202.dyndns.org:

> On 22 Jan 2005 17:44:03 CST, JGH staggered into the Black Sun and
said:
>> Dances With Crows wrote in
>>> ?!? This is something totally dumb. The ALSA package almost
>>> certainly edited /etc/modules.conf and inserted a few lines like so:
>>> alias sb off
>> You pegged that one. I couldn't figure out how to get rid of all that
>> crap so I reinstalled.
>
> OK, that's killing a fly with a bazooka, but whatever. Reinstallation
> of the entire distro due to a bad config file is usually not the best
> way to fix things.

Editing modules.conf directly seemed to have no effect. Alghouth, maybe
if I had kept at it something would have worked. But there was a ton of
stuff in there and nothing I did seemed to do anything anyway. Same
message over and over "Fatal: module off is not found".

I believe modules.conf is generated automagically by a program called
update-modules. This is based on my experiences the alsa modules. But
'man update-modules' says "This program is obsoltete". Everything I
found in googe referred me to update-modules. This is when I decided to
just reinstall. Screw it.

It was a practically fresh install anyway.
>
>> Anyway, parms you gave me for the modprobe sb worked too. Now I just
>> have to figure out how to get debian to load that module at boot.
>
> Debian, unlike most other distros, doesn't have an /etc/init.d/local
[...]>
> other files under /etc/modules.conf.d/ , so look there first. HTH,


I added sb to /etc/modules. And I think that makes debian try to load
the sb module at boot but I believe it fails for lack of parameters.

So I haven't figured out how to feed it parameters. The /etc/modules
file has comments at the top that say the file contains the *names* of
files to load at boot. I took that literallyBut maybe you can put parms
there too. I just haven't tried it yet.

If that doesn't work though, it's back to google.

On Mon, 24 Jan 2005 22:09:07 +0000 (UTC), JGH staggered into the Black
Sun and said:
> Dances With Crows wrote in
> news:slrncva2lu.ddg.danSPANceswitTRAPhcrows@samant ha.crow202.dyndns.org:
>> On 22 Jan 2005 17:44:03 CST, JGH staggered into the Black Sun and
>>> Dances With Crows wrote in
>>>> ?!? This is something totally dumb. The ALSA package almost
>>>> certainly edited /etc/modules.conf and inserted a few lines like
>>>> so: alias sb off
>>> You pegged that one. I couldn't figure out how to get rid of all
>>> that crap so I reinstalled.
>> OK, that's killing a fly with a bazooka, but whatever.
>> Reinstallation of the entire distro due to a bad config file is
>> usually not the best way to fix things.
> Editing modules.conf directly seemed to have no effect.

Sometimes you need to run "depmod -a" before all changes are recognized.

> I believe modules.conf is generated automagically by a program called
> update-modules.

This program reads files under /etc/modules.d/ and stitches them all
together into a modules.conf file.

> 'man update-modules' says "This program is obsoltete".

?? That's bizarre. It's just a fairly simple shell script in /sbin.

>>> Anyway, parms you gave me for the modprobe sb worked too. Now I just
>>> have to figure out how to get debian to load that module at boot.
>> Debian, unlike most other distros, doesn't have an /etc/init.d/local
> [...]
>> other files under /etc/modules.conf.d/ , so look there first. HTH,
> I added sb to /etc/modules. And I think that makes debian try to load
> the sb module at boot but I believe it fails for lack of parameters.

Yep. That's why you need to have modules.conf set up properly.

> So I haven't figured out how to feed it parameters. The /etc/modules
> file has comments at the top that say the file contains the *names* of
> files to load at boot. I took that literally--But maybe you can put
> parms there too. I just haven't tried it yet.

Try editing one of the files under /etc/modules.d/ and adding the line

options sb irq=5 io=0x220 dma=1 dma16=5

....or whatever options you need, running modules-update, rmmodding sb
and its dependencies, and reloading them again. HTH,

--
Matt G|There is no Darkness in Eternity/But only Light too dim for us to see
Brainbench MVP for Linux Admin / mail: TRAP + SPAN don't belong
http://www.brainbench.com / Hire me!
-----------------------------/ http://crow202.dyndns.org/~mhgraham/resume