I usually don't setup any GUI on my Linux systems. Yesterday I installed with X and Gnome on a spare system for some testing and hit a problem. Right after login the system freezes. The system froze already earlier when I opted to test the sound card on the Welcome screen and when I login with the alternative login choice xterm and shut down it freezes when "saving mixer settings". So, I suspect there's some problem with the onboard sound or with the driver that gets used from X. How's the best way to cope with this? I don't really need sound, how to disable (short of disabling it on the mainboard)? I already commented out the alsactl stuff in modprobe.conf, but this doesn't change anything and the snd_* modules still get loaded. According to modprobe it thinks it's Intel 8x0 while it is an nforce2 chipset. Well, this may be okay for the kernel, I don't know. Can I disable using sound for the X server or tell the kernel not to load any sound modules?
Kai
On 13/02/06, Kai Schaetzl maillists@conactive.com wrote:
I usually don't setup any GUI on my Linux systems. Yesterday I installed with X and Gnome on a spare system for some testing and hit a problem. Right after login the system freezes. The system froze already earlier when I opted to test the sound card on the Welcome screen and when I login with the alternative login choice xterm and shut down it freezes when "saving mixer settings". So, I suspect there's some problem with the onboard sound or with the driver that gets used from X. How's the best way to cope with this? I don't really need sound, how to disable (short of disabling it on the mainboard)?
You could try hacking around in /etc/sysconfig/hwconf ? Obviously make a backup copy first. :)
Have a look at the output from...
# grep -r snd /etc/*
See if that helps you track down where it's being started from.
Is sndconfig enabled in the various /etc/rc.N directories?
# chkconfig --list | grep -i snd
Have you also tried setting the runlevel to 3 and running startx manually to see if the problem still occurs there?
Will.
Will McDonald wrote on Tue, 14 Feb 2006 00:30:12 +0000:
You could try hacking around in /etc/sysconfig/hwconf ? Obviously make a backup copy first. :)
Ah, thanks. That shows "nforce AC'97 sound controller" or so using a driver intel-8x0m. Onboard video and LAN work fine, but not sound. I suppose if I want to stop it freezing I've to go to Nvidia and look for a sound driver.
# grep -r snd /etc/*
mostly in the alsa directory. I think I would need to stop modprobe from detecting the soundcard. That's not much different from disabling the soundcard, see next.
Is sndconfig enabled in the various /etc/rc.N directories?
no sndconfig or snd-config, but snd mentioned in rc.sysinit and alsa in the stop and reboot scripts (that's where the "saving mixer settings" is coming from). I didn't really want to comment out stuff in the rc files, so I have switched off onboard sound in the BIOS. Freezing has stopped.
# chkconfig --list | grep -i snd
Have you also tried setting the runlevel to 3 and running startx manually to see if the problem still occurs there?
Seems so, it stops after "starting anacron OK" (when switching to runlevel 3). Don't know what next option is, but i have given up on that, see above.
Thanks for the hints, anyway!
Kai
On Monday 13 February 2006 14:31, Kai Schaetzl wrote:
I usually don't setup any GUI on my Linux systems. Yesterday I installed with X and Gnome on a spare system for some testing and hit a problem. Right after login the system freezes. The system froze already earlier when I opted to test the sound card on the Welcome screen and when I login with the alternative login choice xterm and shut down it freezes when "saving mixer settings". So, I suspect there's some problem with the onboard sound or with the driver that gets used from X. How's the best way to cope with this? I don't really need sound, how to disable (short of disabling it on the mainboard)? I already commented out the alsactl stuff in modprobe.conf, but this doesn't change anything and the snd_* modules still get loaded. According to modprobe it thinks it's Intel 8x0 while it is an nforce2 chipset. Well, this may be okay for the kernel, I don't know. Can I disable using sound for the X server or tell the kernel not to load any sound modules?
Disable the sound in the BIOS. Most any motherboard, even the really, really cheap ones will let you do this. I do this routinely on servers just to reduce the number of variables in administration. (why would you want the sound ON in a server?) I also turn off serial/parallel/floppy ports, too, sometimes USB.
-
Benjamin Smith -
Kai Schaetzl -
Will McDonald