No sound with Fedora Core 1, Kernel 2.6.3 on an IBM Netvista
 

I have an IBM Netvista, Intel 810 chipset and soundcard model is reported by Fedora as 82801BA/BAM AC'97 Audio.

I upgraded to Kernel 2.6.1, then 2.6.3 using the RPMs. I made the necessary changes to get 2.6 working, and everything works fine except the audio. I have done tonnes of research and tried numerous suggestions including but not limited to editing my modprobe.conf file and installing the appropriate drivers. The appropriate module (snd_intel8x0) is listed by lsmod but is not being used by Fedora. My sound card worked fine with the original kernel (2.4.x).

The only reason my box is not set to boot into Fedora by default is because I cannot live without my music. So I really need to get this up an running.

The 2.6 kernel series includes ALSA (http://www.alsa-project.org) whereas the 2.4 kernel series includes OSS audio drivers. ALSA also comes with an OSS compatibility layer, so programs need not be recompiled to use native ALSA drivers and/or devices. You would only need to load ALSA's OSS compatibility modules. ALSA channels are "mute" by default, so don't forget to run alsamixer to enable the channels. Depending on whether you've installed ALSA software yourself or with prebuilt packages, you may need to add hooks that save/restore mixer settings with alsactl. A common mistake is that ALSA newbies confuse native ALSA support with ALSA OSS compatibility. You must be sure what audio drivers your audio player or sound server uses.

What does that mean? If it is listed, it is loaded and active.

I don't know much about my sound server. Its whatever comes standard in Fedora Core One. I only upgraded the Kernel to 2.6.3 and modified the config files required to get 2.6 nicely running. How do I know if the ALSA OSS Compatibility drivers are running and are being used?

What I meant by my comment about the driver being loaded was that I saw that it was installed, but the "redhat-config-soundcard" utility was still attempting to use the old i810_audio drivers used by OSS. And whenever I attempted to change the volume using the panel utility, it wuld simply revert to zero volume. Maybe that was because of the mixer not being configured as you suggested.

I have re-installed Core 1 (I ran out of HD space, so I gave it a bigger partition), but have kept it at kernel 2.4 because of the sound issue. If I decide to upgrade to 2.6.3 what do I need to do to get the sound working?

Fedora Core 1 does not know about native ALSA drivers and will access the OSS devices (e.g. /dev/dsp). To load all ALSA drivers including those with "oss" in the name, you need to follow the instructions found at http://www.alsa-project.org in the soundcard matrix or run alsaconf. Then you need to un-mute the native ALSA mixer with e.g. the "alsamixer" utility or gnome-alsamixer from http://fedora.us Finally, depending on how you have installed ALSA, the alsasound initscript saves and restores the mixer settings. Or you may need to add alsctl restore entries to your modules.conf file.

I wrote a post last week regarding my experience sucessfully getting ALSA to work with 2.6.4. You can read over it here

I have since re-installed FC1 and have decided it was too much of a pain to upgrade to 2.6.4 again. I'll probably stick with 2.4 until FC2's final release.

Thanks for the help. Like you THX75, I have re-installed Core1 and decided its too much trouble to get it up to 2.6.x, so I'm gonna sit tight until Core2 final comes out. Right now I'm battling another set of problems. Fedora is freezing. I did a post for that problem here

Thanks again.