[ubuntu-za] Speaking of Gutsy installation problems

[Ivo Vegter]

This might be of some use:

My on-board sound card didn't get recognised. It was fine in Feisty. 
It's a Realtek ALC888 (HDA-Intel) on an MSI P35 motherboard.

I neglected to track the exact sequence of events, but it turned out the 
required snd-hda-intel kernel module wasn't installed. Modprobe couldn't 
find it, either.

I think the problem was that the upgrade script installed two kernels: 
one "generic" x86 kernel and one "386" kernel (I had both for kernel 
version 2.6.22-14, along with one older kernel from Feisty). Gutsy was 
running the -386 kernel, but had only the restricted modules for the 
-generic kernel installed.

To fix the problem, I did the following:

1. In Synaptic, I uninstalled all -generic kernel packages and made sure 
that the corresponding -386 packages were all installed (search for 
"linux-" with the dash to make things easier to find):
    linux-image-386
      (which installs linux-image-2.6.22-14-386)
    linux-restricted-modules-386
      (which installs linux-restricted-modules-2.6.22-14-386)
    linux-ubuntu-modules-2.6.22-14-386
    linux-backports-modules-2.6.22-14-386

2. Then I installed the missing module from the console:
    modprobe snd-hda-intel

3. Tested that sound works. It did.

4. To make sure the module loads on boot, I added the following line to 
/etc/modules:
    snd-hda-intel

Since this strikes me as one of those dealbreaker problems for 
first-timers, it's probably something that someone, somewhere, in charge 
of the installation/upgrade scripts, should fix.

Meantime, this may help.

-- 
Ivo Vegter    | http://ivo.co.za/ <-- Fun
+27-842102003 | ivo at hivemind.net <-- Work

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