Sound With Ubuntu 7.10 On A Dell Latitude D830
I managed to get sound working using Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy beta) on my Dell Latitude D830 a few weeks ago but hadn’t documented it. I didn’t document it because I basically hacked out a solution that involved compiling a kernel of my own and including the Intel HDA driver in the kernel (rather than as a module like it is by default). This also meant that wireless and such didn’t work which was actually okay because during the day I wanted sound to listen to music but at night at home, I didn’t need sound but required wireless. So essentially i had a big hack that involved me choosing the right kernel to boot from at startup. Not an ideal solution.
But I see now from this bug report that the problem was indeed with the ALSA driver and it’s now been fixed upstream. Unfortunately there’s no update to the Ubuntu packages as of yet but at least now there is a fix that is much less of a hack.
First, grab the latest snapshot source from the ALSA site and extract the file. I grabbed the August 21, 2007 snapshot.
% wget ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/projects/alsa/snapshot/driver/alsa-driver-hg20070821.tar.bz2 % tar xvpjf alsa-driver-hg20070821.tar.bz2
Then change into the new directory, configure the build and install the driver files. It is important to note that until this is fixed, you will likely have to do this everytime the Ubuntu kernel is updated.
./configure --with-cards=hda-intel make sudo make install
After the drivers are installed, reboot and sound will now magically work.
Installing Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon) Tribe 2 on a Dell Latitude D830
I got a new Dell Latitude D830 laptop for work last week and decided that Kubuntu was what I would run on it. However, to date there seems to be little in the way of documenting their install of Linux on the D830, so here’s a start. And I’ll try to update the entry as problems are solved. And I’ll assume that you are familiar with apt-get or the Adept Manager programs and other aspects of managing a Ubuntu-based Linux distribution.
First, the executive summary: I successfully installed Kubuntu Gutsy Gibbon (7.10) Tribe 2 on my Dell Latitude D830, with a few problems. I tried Kubuntu Feisty Fawn (both desktop and alternate) and had little success. And in doing some research it seemed that I would likely run into more problems than it was worth with Feisty given the new leading edge hardware within the D830.
Second, what’s not working? At this point, sound is not functioning whatsoever for me. And I’ve run into problems with some software packages, such as VMware Workstation 5.5 and OpenOffice. But at this point, the software issues seem more to do with the unstability of Gutsy than to do with the D830.
Here’s a look at my Dell D830. It’s a stock Latitude D830 with WUXGA (1920x1200), an Intel wireless network card (rather than the Dell wireless options) and built-in Bluetooth support.
% lspci 00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile Memory Controller Hub (rev 0c) 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Mobile Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 0c) 00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corporation Mobile Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 0c) 00:1a.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI #4 (rev 02) 00:1a.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI #5 (rev 02) 00:1a.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB2 EHCI #2 (rev 02) 00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) HD Audio Controller (rev 02) 00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 02) 00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 2 (rev 02) 00:1c.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 4 (rev 02) 00:1c.5 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 6 (rev 02) 00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI #1 (rev 02) 00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI #2 (rev 02) 00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI #3 (rev 02) 00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB2 EHCI #1 (rev 02) 00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev f2) 00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile LPC Interface Controller (rev 02) 00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation Mobile IDE Controller (rev 02) 00:1f.2 IDE interface: Intel Corporation Mobile SATA IDE Controller (rev 02) 00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 02) 03:01.0 CardBus bridge: O2 Micro, Inc. Cardbus bridge (rev 21) 03:01.4 FireWire (IEEE 1394): O2 Micro, Inc. Firewire (IEEE 1394) (rev 02) 09:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme BCM5755M Gigabit Ethernet PCI Express (rev 02) 0c:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 3945ABG Network Connection (rev 02)
The desktop CD of Gutsy Gibbon didn’t work properly, due to the Intel video card from what I understand, but the alternate install CD worked like a charm. After the install is complete and you’ve booted off your new Kubuntu-based laptop, you should find that X starts up just fine though at this point it will be using the vesa driver rather than the Intel one. To install the Intel driver, which should bring improved graphics as ability to run OpenGL based stuff better, you need to install the ‘xserver-xorg-video-intel’ package. Then you need to edit your /etc/X11/xorg.conf file and change your ‘Device’ section to use the Intel driver and then restart your X Server.
Section "Device"
Identifier "Intel Video Card"
Driver "intel"
BusID "PCI:0:2:0"
EndSection
If you want to control your touchpad, which works out of the box, from within KDE you need to install the ‘ksynaptics’ package and then change your /etc/X11/xorg.conf file, adding a ‘SHMConfig’ option.
Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Synaptics Touchpad"
Driver "synaptics"
Option "SendCoreEvents" "true"
Option "Device" "/dev/psaux"
Option "Protocol" "auto-dev"
Option "HorizScrollDelta" "0"
Option "SHMConfig" "on"
EndSection
Suspend and hibernate also worked out of the box, once I changed the ‘When Laptop Lid Closed’ option to ‘Suspend’. To change that, click on the battery icon in the system tray which will bring up the Power Manager options. Frequency scaling also works perfectly out of the box.
Unfortunately, the sound does not currently work which, according to this bug, appears to be related to the current version of the ALSA driver (version 1.0.14). The error I see in the logs is as follows:
[ 21.400000] hda_intel: azx_get_response timeout, switching to polling mode... [ 22.404000] hda_intel: azx_get_response timeout, switching to single_cmd mode... [ 26.100000] hda_codec: No auto-config is available, default to model=ref [ 33.508000] hda-intel: no codecs initialized
I’ll update this page as I encounter more details on the sound problem. Also, at this point I have not tested the Firewire or Bluetooth functionality as I do not have any devices to try out. Bluetooth, however, does appear to be working from a KDE perspective so if I can find someone at work with a Bluetooth device, I’ll see if I can make it do something.
As I mentioned, I ran into some issues with some software packages but I will document those issues in separate entries.
