CentOS - Aug 2009 - kernel-2.6.18-128.7.1.el5.i686 update breaks AMD onboard sound

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The new kernel-2.6.18-128.7.1.el5.i686 kernel breaks audio support on my
onboard audio on an AMD Solo motherboard.

00:07.5 Multimedia audio controller: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD]
AMD-8111 AC97 Audio (rev 03)

After upgrading to the new kernel from kernel-2.6.18-128.4.1.el5.i686, I
quickly noticed audio not working in Flash in firefox, then after some
tinkering realized audio didn't work at all, not even the mixer,
although the sound card drivers were loaded.

I ran system-config-soundcard and got no audio as well, it was unable to
open the device.  Running ogg123 from the commandline gave me an ALSA
error about being unable to open a sound device before SEGV'ing.  An
strace revealed that /dev/snd/* was missing a device node.

I rebooted into the prior kernel (kernel-2.6.18-128.4.1.el5.i686) and
sound came back.  The missing device node was back, along with several
others that are missing in the new kernel as well.

Here is the kernel rpm changelog between the working and non-working
kernels:


* Mon Aug 24 2009 Karanbir Singh <kbsingh at centos.org>
[2.6.18-128.7.1.el5.centos]
- - Roll in CentOS Branding

* Wed Aug 19 2009 Jiri Pirko <jpirko at redhat.com> [2.6.18-128.7.1.el5]
- - [net] prevent null pointer dereference in udp_sendmsg (Vitaly
Mayatskikh) [518047 518043] {CVE-2009-2698}

* Sat Aug 15 2009 Jiri Pirko <jpirko at redhat.com> [2.6.18-128.6.1.el5]
- - [net] make sock_sendpage use kernel_sendpage (Jiri Pirko ) [517445
516955] {CVE-2009-2692}

* Tue Aug 04 2009 Jiri Pirko <jpirko at redhat.com> [2.6.18-128.5.1.el5]
- - [dlm] free socket in error exit path (David Teigland ) [515432 508829]


It'd be nice to try the Red Hat kernel to see if it is a CentOS specific
glitch or not, but I suspect it isn't.  Can't do that easily
unfortunately.

Are there existing CentOS builds of the 128.5/128.6 kernels archived
somewhere?

I had a quick scan through Red Hat and CentOS bugzillas, and did not see
anything reported about this yet.

I'm still investigating the problem before filing a bug report myself,
but wanted to get some feedback from other users to determine how wide
the problem might be, and hopefully narrow it down.



- --
Mike A. Harris
http://mharris.ca  |  https://twitter.com/mikeaharris

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On Sat, 2009-08-29 at 09:06 -0400, Mike A. Harris wrote:
> <snip>
> The new kernel-2.6.18-128.7.1.el5.i686 kernel breaks audio support on my
> onboard audio on an AMD Solo motherboard.
> 
> 00:07.5 Multimedia audio controller: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD]
> AMD-8111 AC97 Audio (rev 03)
I know this isn't much help, but the starting point is to narrow
possible causes. I'm guessing it's a mobo/driver specifc issue. This is
because I just did a test on my setup and all was good.

$ uname -a
Linux centos501.homegroannetwork 2.6.18-128.7.1.el5 #1 SMP Mon Aug 24
08:20:55 EDT 2009 i686 athlon i386 GNU/Linux

00:11.5 Multimedia audio controller: VIA Technologies, Inc.
VT8233/A/8235/8237 AC97 Audio Controller (rev 60)

This is on an EPOX 8KRAI PRO desktop mobo.

Since it's the weekend, I don't know how many of the folks that could
help are around. You might try looking at the kernel menu config file
and see if that driver is disabled. Maybe the plus kernel has it
enabled, since they turn on lots of extra things.
> <snip>
> - --
> Mike A. Harris
> <snip sig stuff>
HTH
-- 
Bill

On Sat, Aug 29, 2009 at 6:06 AM, Mike A. Harris<mharris at mharris.ca>
wrote:
>
> The new kernel-2.6.18-128.7.1.el5.i686 kernel breaks audio support on my
> onboard audio on an AMD Solo motherboard.
>
> 00:07.5 Multimedia audio controller: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD]
> AMD-8111 AC97 Audio (rev 03)
>
I have this on my ECS GeForce6100PM-M2 w/AMD 64x2 7750:

00:05.0 Audio device: nVidia Corporation MCP61 High Definition Audio (rev a2)

No new problems with sound on the 2.6.18-128.7.1.el5.x86_64 kernel (I
know, it's the 64-bit kernel, not your 32-bit one).  I have other,
older problems related to SeaMonkey 2.0a3, but that's not related.

mhr