Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Mozilla Weave v0.2.99 for F10 x86_64

Version 0.2.99 compiled on F10 for x86_64 can be found here.

Sound issue on FC10

Today's fedora kernel update, kernel-2.6.27.12-170.2.5.fc10.x86_64, resolves the issues with the headphone output. There's no need for the hda-verb command anymore (at least on my Dell D830).

Thursday, January 15, 2009

Mozilla Weave on F10 x86_64

After installing my 64 bit fedora, I found out that the default weave download doesn't work on 64 bit as it needs a native 64 bit library to do the crypto stuff which isnt included in the distributed plugin.
Solution is to grab the weave source and compile it yourself, which has some pitfalls on fedora if you try to use the xulrunner rpm, due to difference in paths.

Therefor to help people looking for it, you can download a 64 bit compiled F10 weave 0.2.98 from here.

Note of warning: my laptop didn't import the bookmarks correctly, not sure if it's a weave issue or something else. So tred carefully.

Fedora F10 x86_64 on Dell latitude D830 sound woes

There's some weird stuff going on with the sound on my dell latitude D830 laptop. I recently got that laptop and put fedora F10 (64 bit version) on it, so I'm not sure if it's a fedora issue or a more general one, as I haven't used any other distro on this machine.

The biggest problem is that there are a few issues causing audio to fail.

Here's what you can try to do to resolve it:

  1. run 'paman' (the PulseAudio Manager)
    if you can't connect, then pulse isnt running for some reason.. issue start-pulseaudio-x11 from your user account to restart it.

  2. in paman, check if Devices->Sinks actually shows a hardware device and NOT the Null Output device. If you have the Null Output, it means pulse was unable to open your hardware device, this happens when something had the alsa device open when starting pulse (e.g. I had this due to a KVM virtual machine that had a sound device attached to it).

    To debug, from a shell start pulse in commandline mode:
    $ pulseaudio -nC -vvv


    then issue:
    >>> load-module module-hal-detect


    and watch the debug output, it might say it can't open /dev/snd/pcmXXXX
    to check what is keeping that device open, issue:

    # fuser -v /dev/snd* /dev/dsp*


    kill the apps, then restart pulse from your user shell (start-pulseaudio-x11) and recheck in paman if the Sink is now showing the alsa device.

  3. if all this is ok and the pulseaudio volume program even shows sound playing, but you still get no sound, then most likely alsa didn't setup the sound codec correctly.. this was the case on my D830 which has a SigmaTel STAC9205 (you can find this info in /proc/asound/card0/codec#0)

  4. first try adding an option to modprobe, e.g.

    $ cat /etc/modprobe.d/dell
    options snd-hda-intel model=dell-m42


    and restart your machine, make sure the above issues don't popup again. If you have a different codec, you might check the alsa doc for something that fits your machine.

  5. If that didn't help.. grab hda-verb then look for the speaker node in /proc/asound/card0/codec#0

    e.g. on my laptop:

    Node 0x0d [Pin Complex] wcaps 0x400181: Stereo
    Pincap 0x0000003f: IN OUT HP Detect Trigger ImpSense
    Pin Default 0x90170310: [Fixed] Speaker at Int N/A
    Conn = Analog, Color = Unknown
    DefAssociation = 0x1, Sequence = 0x0
    Misc = NO_PRESENCE
    Pin-ctls: 0x40: OUT
    Unsolicited: tag=00, enabled=0
    Connection: 1
    0x10


    If the Pin-Ctls doesnt have OUT, then you will get no output. You can fix this with the hda-verb command:

    # hda-verb /dev/snd/hwC0D0 0x0d SET_PIN_WIDGET_CONTROL 0x40


    This should enable the sound output on your speakers.

  6. Last issue, speakers might work but as soon as you plug in a headphone, your sound goes away. (ie. sound doesnt work from the headphone).
    Look in the codec file for a headphone node:


    Node 0x0a [Pin Complex] wcaps 0x400181: Stereo
    Pincap 0x0000173f: IN OUT HP Detect Trigger ImpSense
    Vref caps: HIZ 50 GRD 80
    Pin Default 0x0321101f: [Jack] HP Out at Ext Left
    Conn = 1/8, Color = Black
    DefAssociation = 0x1, Sequence = 0xf
    Pin-ctls: 0x00: VREF_HIZ
    Unsolicited: tag=3a, enabled=1
    Connection: 2
    0x10* 0x11


    Then enable the OUT with the same hda-verb as shown above, but update the node id:

    # hda-verb /dev/snd/hwC0D0 0x0a SET_PIN_WIDGET_CONTROL 0x40

Hopefully you will have sound by now.