ALSA config is not saving changes

[Ron]

I have a problem with my father's computer. His XP is causing all kinds of problems and I'm converting him to Lupu 5.1.1 (frugal). His internal sound card died a while back so I installed a USB sound card for both speakers and mic. This was fine on Windows, but now I had to run alsa conf (the ALSA wizard) to find a USB driver, and alsa mixer to set it up. This worked fine, but when the system is shut down and restarted, this setup is lost and I have to do it all over. This won't work for him; I have to keep it simple. The wizard says that changes will be saved, but apparently they aren't.

Right now, I'm instructing him to keep the computer on 24/7 (which may be better in the long run anyway actually, if Lupu is stable enough).

Any solution to this?

Ron

[Dewbie]

Not exactly a solution, but:
http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=57741
Even though we're discussing two different versions of Puppy, the problem might be related.

[disciple]

Doesn't sound related to me.

Try clicking Setup (on the pinboard)> Configure Startup and blacklisting any modules that are automatically loaded for your on-board sound card.

I'm not 100% sure that this will solve your problem in very recent Puppy versions.

[Ron]

Thanks for the link, but alsawizard and mixer work fine for the USB card, it just doesn't get saved for the next boot.

disciple, sorry, but I can't find any "Configure Startup" in Setup or anywhere else.

Is there a config file that I can modify to force it keep the file for the next boot? I'm assuming that this is a bug in the alsa setup module which maybe is not often experienced, because I doubt if many people have to change the configuration like this. I imagine that most of the time, alsa finds the proper default driver and people don't need to use the wizard except for a temporary situation. Or am I wrong about that?

[disciple]

I could be wrong, but I think the problem is Puppy's hardware autodetection, not so much the Alsa configurator. Your broken on-board sound card is being autodetected at every boot, overwriting the alsa configuration. This is what happens on my machine with the Puppies that first autodetected sound cards. I haven't tried very recent Puppies.
Blacklisting the appropriate modules works for me. Have you had a good look in the menu for something that might configure the modules loaded at startup?

Otherwise you might be able to modify the startup scripts to turn off the autodetection.

[bigpup]

Do you have the on-board internal sound card disabled in Bios?

[Ron]

Okay guys, thanks so much for the advice. I really thought that I had disabled the old card previously, but I hadn't. Disabling it in bios did the trick., so your theory is right. This shows how not doing that when you install something new can come back to bite you.

Disciple, even though I now don't need to access startup modules or changing their configurations, this would be a good thing to have, so I think I'll start a new thread about that. Maybe it's been left out in newer Puppy's (this is Lupu 5.1.1). Bigpup: know anything about this?

Thanks again

Ron

[benign]

I had this problem also. In case anyone is interested or doesn't want to disable their onboard sound/not load any modules, my workaround was to place a script in the /root/startup folder:

#!/bin/sh
cp /root/modprobe.conf /etc/
/etc/rc.d/rc.alsa stop
/etc/rc.d/rc.alsa start
amixer -q set "Speaker" 75% unmute

The new modprobe.conf that it copies is a version that contains the following lines at the bottom:

alias sound-slot-0 snd-usb-audio
alias snd-card-0 snd-usb-audio
alias sound-slot-0 snd-hda-intel
alias snd-card-0 snd-hda-intel

This makes both the onboard and usb work, although programs will only output to one at a time (i.e. you have to unplug one, plug in the other, close and reopen the program)

[Ron]

Benign,
Thanks for the tip. This kind of stuff can really come in handy sometimes.

disciple,

Disciple, even though I now don't need to access startup modules or changing their configurations, this would be a good thing to have, so I think I'll start a new thread about that. Maybe it's been left out in newer Puppy's (this is Lupu 5.1.1). Bigpup: know anything about this?

I did find the access to this tool. I had forgotten this, but for some reason, "Setup" on the pinboard is "WizardWizard" and has a different selection than "Setup" from the tray even though they have the same name. Subsequent Puppy versions should correct this IMO. I had overlooked your suggestion to go from the pinboard "Setup" and went instead through the other one. Now I know more about the setup menu so thanks for that suggestion.