Sound card not recognized? (Find the module and modify alsa.conf)

[rainbowsally]

Sound card not recognized?
Here's how I found snd-hda and enabled it.

I thought HDA would be capitalized.

modname=HDA
grep -i /lib/modules/3.0.0-12-generic/modules.order "$modname"

We're looking specifically for "snd-*" that looks like our kernel object (ko file).

$> grep -i "snd-$modname" /lib/modules/*/modules.order
kernel/sound/pci/hda/snd-hda-codec.ko
kernel/sound/pci/hda/snd-hda-codec-realtek.ko
kernel/sound/pci/hda/snd-hda-codec-cmedia.ko
kernel/sound/pci/hda/snd-hda-codec-analog.ko
kernel/sound/pci/hda/snd-hda-codec-idt.ko
kernel/sound/pci/hda/snd-hda-codec-si3054.ko
kernel/sound/pci/hda/snd-hda-codec-cirrus.ko
kernel/sound/pci/hda/snd-hda-codec-ca0110.ko
kernel/sound/pci/hda/snd-hda-codec-conexant.ko
kernel/sound/pci/hda/snd-hda-codec-via.ko
kernel/sound/pci/hda/snd-hda-codec-hdmi.ko
kernel/sound/pci/hda/snd-hda-intel.ko

HDA wasn't capitalized. Doesn't matter. Got it.

"intel" would also have worked as a clue for my driver.

$> grep -i "$modname" /lib/modules/*/modules.order

with modname = "intel" would also have worked for my driver.

That's half the job done. We now have a list of <name>.ko modules to choose from.

Then I edited a line in /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf as superuser and cloned an existing line such as

install snd-via82xx /sbin/modprobe --ignore-install snd-via82xx $CMDLINE_OPTS && { /sbin/modprobe --quiet --use-blacklist snd-seq ; }

and changed the module name (snd-via82xx in this case) to (snd-hda-intel).

install snd-hda-intel /sbin/modprobe --ignore-install snd-hda-intel $CMDLINE_OPTS && { /sbin/modprobe --quiet --use-blacklist snd-seq ; }

Reboot and test.

As you can see, the general format for this line of text in alsa.conf is

install <name> /sbin/modprobe --ignore-install <name> $CMDLINE_OPTS && { /sbin/modprobe --quiet --use-blacklist snd-seq ; }

I have dialup so I don't know if there's a gui app or systemsettings plugin to handle this kind of configuration, but there should be. The parsing job is fairly simple and the number choices the user is faced with are apparently very 'finite'.

It wasn't a 'codecs'.