Attention Toshiba A215-s7422 Users.
 

I am in desperate need of a distro that just plain works. I need my sound and wireless working. I'm willing to use any distro as long as it's gnome and the darn thing works. Vista is driving me insane...

HELP!

Yeah, I have this exact laptop. :)
Here's what you need to do. First, go here http://www.datanorth.net/~cuervo/blo...te-a215-s7407/
Then, go to Realtek's page here http://www.realtek.com.tw/downloads/ and download their drivers for you High Definition Audio. Installation is very simple. You unpack the archive, become root and run ./install from the directory created after unpacking. The script will install everything and modify your module configuration file. You will need to add one option to the configuration, though, so it looks like this

teddy@toshiba~$ cat /etc/modprobe.d/sound
alias snd-card-0 snd-hda-intel
alias sound-slot-0 snd-hda-intel
options snd-hda-intel model=toshiba

This is on my Slackware 12 installation. And this is on my Arch AMD64 on the same machine

teddy@toshiba~$ cat /mnt/hd/etc/modprobe.conf
#
# /etc/modprobe.conf (for v2.6 kernels)
#
#alias wlan0 ndiswrapper
# --- BEGIN: Generated by ALSACONF, do not edit. ---
# --- ALSACONF version 1.0.14 ---
alias snd-card-0 snd-hda-intel
alias sound-slot-0 snd-hda-intel
options snd-hda-intel model=toshiba
# --- END: Generated by ALSACONF, do not edit. ---

Don't forget to unmute the controls in alsamixer. After reboot you'll have sound. Pretty good sound, actually. :)

Now, wireless. You can make it work with ndiswrapper. I haven't tried that. Instead, you can go here
http://www.datanorth.net/~cuervo/rtl8187b/
and get the "modified" driver pack. You'll need to unpack it and run ./makedrv from inside the created directory. The rest is explained on the first page I gave you.

The real problem is the 3D graphics on this machine, actually. The latest ATI proprietary drivers work, though, with occasional memory errors. Arch and Slackware handle those errors well, that's why I chose them. Other distros can have problems. But in any case, 3D acceleration is present, I can play all 3D games easily with no problems.

It's a pretty good laptop, it just has some non-standard parts.

Good Luck,

You said something about Slackware. Is that the version of linux you were running? I was running ubuntu for a long time before I ran into these issues. I still run ubuntu on my desktop, though. I wonder if these fixes you posted would work for ubuntu? I'll have to give them a try tomorrow... it's entirely too late to deal with an installation of any sort!!

By the way, do me a favor. Plug in headphones to your laptop while playing a music file. Do your main speakers shut off? I got my sound to work in ubuntu previously by adding that additional line, but once I plugged in headphones, my main speakers never shut off. That's a problem with me... What did yours do?

Yup. Just checked it again right now to be sure. When I plug in headphones, the main speakers turn off as expected.
As to your other questions, I'm triple-booting Vista that came pre-installed with the machine (I never boot it, but since I paid money for it anyway, I figured what the heck? :)), Slackware 12 (in the 32-bit mode) and the latest Arch AMD64 in the 64-bit mode. Mostly for reference and for some professional needs.
Slackware is rock stable while Arch is a little bit rough. But it provides cutting-edge packages, as fresh as they get. :) I'm typing this from Arch right now.
I'm pretty sure the fixes described above will work on about any distribution with a more or less recent kernel, as they are kernel patches, not distro-specific stuff. Good luck!

PS One more thing though. Slackware doesn't have GNOME on its disks. But you can install it from dropline-gnome, once you're done with the system install.

Man... I'm installing Ubuntu Gutsy as we speak. I REALLY hope this fixes it on Ubuntu... I have openSuSE 10.3 on it now. I installed it simply to see if that distro would have any better luck.

How in the world did you come across this fix?

What do you mean about the 3d graphics on this card? This is one of the better graphics cards I've used on laptops...

Back to the sound topic...

I went into my sound file to add those lines. However when I opened it, it was blank. I quickly remembered that I had done something like this in the past... a quick bit of researching over at ubuntuforums reminded me that instead of editing etc/modprobe.d/sound, it was etc/modprode.d/alsa-base. I went into alsa-base, sure enough a ton of stuff was there.

At the bottom I added those three lines. I saved and rebooted.

I booted up, no sound. Oh wait, maybe it's muted in the system? I get into the system, click on the volume icon to adjust the mutedness of it... And I got this dreaded error...

The volume control did not find any elements and/or devices to control. This means either that you don't have the right GStreamer plugins installed, or that you don't have a sound card configured.

You should use the alsamixer command to unmute the sound. Also, look at what controllers it finds.
The "options" line should be after "alias" lines. Did alsaconfig pop up at the end of installing the driver? Does the snd-hda-intel module show up in lsmod?

My lsmod.

jason@jasonlp:~$ lsmod
Module Size Used by
r8187 56200 0
ieee80211_rtl 67076 1 r8187
ieee80211_crypt_ccmp_rtl 8448 0
ieee80211_crypt_tkip_rtl 11648 0
ieee80211_crypt_wep_rtl 6272 0
ieee80211_crypt_rtl 6788 4 ieee80211_rtl,ieee80211_crypt_ccmp_rtl,ieee80211_crypt_tkip_rtl,ieee80211_crypt_wep_rtl
fglrx 656352 11
ipv6 273892 10
af_packet 24840 0
rfcomm 42136 2
l2cap 26240 11 rfcomm
bluetooth 57060 4 rfcomm,l2cap
ppdev 10244 0
powernow_k8 16960 1
cpufreq_conservative 8072 0
cpufreq_powersave 2688 0
cpufreq_userspace 5280 0
cpufreq_stats 7232 0
cpufreq_ondemand 9612 1
freq_table 5792 3 powernow_k8,cpufreq_stats,cpufreq_ondemand
video 18060 0
sbs 19592 0
dock 10656 0
container 5504 0
button 8976 0
ac 6148 0
battery 11012 0
sbp2 24072 0
parport_pc 37412 0
lp 12580 0
parport 37448 3 ppdev,parport_pc,lp
joydev 11328 0
snd_hda_intel 263712 0
snd_pcm_oss 44672 0
ide_cd 32672 0
snd_mixer_oss 17664 1 snd_pcm_oss
cdrom 37536 1 ide_cd
snd_pcm 80388 2 snd_hda_intel,snd_pcm_oss
snd_seq_dummy 4740 0
snd_seq_oss 33152 0
snd_seq_midi 9600 0
snd_rawmidi 25728 1 snd_seq_midi
snd_seq_midi_event 8448 2 snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_midi
snd_seq 53232 6 snd_seq_dummy,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_midi,snd_seq_midi_event
snd_timer 24324 2 snd_pcm,snd_seq
psmouse 39952 0
k8temp 6656 0
sdhci 18828 0
mmc_core 28420 1 sdhci
pcspkr 4224 0
serio_raw 8068 0
snd_seq_device 9228 5 snd_seq_dummy,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_midi,snd_rawmidi,snd_seq
snd 54660 9 snd_hda_intel,snd_pcm_oss,snd_mixer_oss,snd_pcm,snd_seq_oss,snd_rawmidi,snd_seq,snd_timer,snd_seq_de vice
soundcore 8800 1 snd
i2c_piix4 9740 0
snd_page_alloc 11400 2 snd_hda_intel,snd_pcm
i2c_core 26112 1 i2c_piix4
shpchp 34580 0
pci_hotplug 32704 1 shpchp
ati_agp 10124 0
agpgart 35016 2 fglrx,ati_agp
evdev 11136 5
ext3 133896 1
jbd 60456 1 ext3
mbcache 9732 1 ext3
sg 36764 0
usbhid 29536 0
hid 28928 1 usbhid
atiixp 7056 0 [permanent]
ide_core 116804 2 ide_cd,atiixp
sd_mod 30336 5
r8169 32260 0
ahci 23300 4
ohci1394 36528 0
ieee1394 96312 2 sbp2,ohci1394
ata_generic 8452 0
libata 125168 2 ahci,ata_generic
scsi_mod 147084 4 sbp2,sg,sd_mod,libata
ehci_hcd 36492 0
ohci_hcd 22916 0
usbcore 138632 5 r8187,usbhid,ehci_hcd,ohci_hcd
thermal 14344 0
processor 32072 2 powernow_k8,thermal
fan 5764 0
fuse 47124 5
apparmor 40728 0
commoncap 8320 1 apparmor




This is the bottom section of my modprobe.d/alsa-base file. The last 3 lines were added by me after reading your above post.

options snd-intel8x0m index=-2
options snd-via82xx-modem index=-2
options snd-usb-audio index=-2
options snd-usb-usx2y index=-2
options snd-usb-caiaq index=-2
# Ubuntu #62691, enable MPU for snd-cmipci
options snd-cmipci mpu_port=0x330 fm_port=0x388
alias snd-card-0 snd-hda-intel
alias sound-slot-0 snd-hda-intel
options snd-hda-intel model=toshiba


As for the wireless - I downloaded it, unpacked it, and ran the ./makedrv. Afterwards, I ran ./wlan0up. I can see my wireless network in the list. However, if I select it, it just cycles for a minute and comes back as being unable to connect. It shows 0 signal in the list when I select it. There is no encryption on this network, only wireless MAC filtering which this laptop + my usb adapter is permitted. What can I do?