sound disappears after hard reboot

[jiggolo182]

the other night my computer froze on me while surfing the net. i had to do a hard reboot and when it came back up all my audio functionality was gone. i have an old soundblaster card and a usb logitech wireless music transmitter that sends music to another room. both devices worked before the reboot. i have tried reinstalling alsa, linux-sound-base, and various other packages related to audio. none of them can seem to find a card. the weird thing is that lspci does see the soundblaster card but xmms tells me there are no sound devices to configure and alsaconf doesnt do much either.. when i try to run alsamixer it tells me there's no device attached. i have tested both audio devices in the same computer, on the same slots, in winXP and both are working so it seems like its just a linux problem. any ideas on how to start troubleshooting this? as a last ditch effort i downloaded the newest alsa source from their site, built everything and attempted an install.. even as root i get errors that it cant install the kernel modules. i am running debian lenny and i just did apt-get upgrade to see if that fixed it.. no such luck. would a dist-upgrade help? id prefer to not go that route, i hear that often times things dont go too smoothly.. any and all help is appreciated.

[JohnT]

Is the module loading for your card?

[jiggolo182]

i'm not sure how to check that.. lsmod? i just ran that but nothing for sound appears to be loaded..

[JohnT]

The command to load the module would be
modprobe <name of card>
I'm not familiar with Debian so you would have to determine why its not loading at boot. Maybe someone more familiar with your version will come along to provide additional help.Here's a link to the modprobe command and its usage.
http://linux.die.net/man/8/modprobe

[JohnT]

i'm not sure how to check that.. lsmod? i just ran that but nothing for sound appears to be loaded..
Do you see anything listed for sound related?

[jiggolo182]

ok, when i run alsaconf as root it finds the card, ca0106 then it says its gonna try to configure snd-ca0106. the following is what i get from it trying to configure the card...


brandon@wembley:~$ sudo alsaconf
Building card database...


Loading driver...
WARNING: Error inserting snd_page_alloc (/lib/modules/2.6.18-4-486/kernel/sound/acore/snd-page-alloc.ko): Invalid module format
WARNING: Error inserting ac97_bus (/lib/modules/2.6.18-4-486/kernel/sound/misc/ac97_bus.ko): Invalid module format
FATAL: Error inserting snd (/lib/modules/2.6.18-4-486/kernel/sound/acore/snd.ko): Invalid module format
WARNING: Error running install command for snd
WARNING: Error inserting snd_timer (/lib/modules/2.6.18-4-486/kernel/sound/acore/snd-timer.ko): Invalid module format
WARNING: Error inserting snd_page_alloc (/lib/modules/2.6.18-4-486/kernel/sound/acore/snd-page-alloc.ko): Invalid module format
FATAL: Error inserting snd (/lib/modules/2.6.18-4-486/kernel/sound/acore/snd.ko): Invalid module format
WARNING: Error running install command for snd
WARNING: Error inserting snd_timer (/lib/modules/2.6.18-4-486/kernel/sound/acore/snd-timer.ko): Invalid module format
FATAL: Error inserting snd_pcm (/lib/modules/2.6.18-4-486/kernel/sound/acore/snd-pcm.ko): Invalid module format
WARNING: Error running install command for snd_pcm
WARNING: Error inserting snd_ac97_codec (/lib/modules/2.6.18-4-486/kernel/sound/pci/ac97/snd-ac97-codec.ko): Invalid module format
WARNING: Error inserting snd_seq_device (/lib/modules/2.6.18-4-486/kernel/sound/acore/seq/snd-seq-device.ko): Invalid module format
FATAL: Error inserting snd (/lib/modules/2.6.18-4-486/kernel/sound/acore/snd.ko): Invalid module format
WARNING: Error running install command for snd
WARNING: Error inserting snd_seq_device (/lib/modules/2.6.18-4-486/kernel/sound/acore/seq/snd-seq-device.ko): Invalid module format
FATAL: Error inserting snd_rawmidi (/lib/modules/2.6.18-4-486/kernel/sound/acore/snd-rawmidi.ko): Invalid module format
WARNING: Error running install command for snd_rawmidi
WARNING: Error inserting snd_page_alloc (/lib/modules/2.6.18-4-486/kernel/sound/acore/snd-page-alloc.ko): Invalid module format
WARNING: Error inserting ac97_bus (/lib/modules/2.6.18-4-486/kernel/sound/misc/ac97_bus.ko): Invalid module format
FATAL: Error inserting snd (/lib/modules/2.6.18-4-486/kernel/sound/acore/snd.ko): Invalid module format
WARNING: Error running install command for snd
WARNING: Error inserting snd_timer (/lib/modules/2.6.18-4-486/kernel/sound/acore/snd-timer.ko): Invalid module format
WARNING: Error inserting snd_page_alloc (/lib/modules/2.6.18-4-486/kernel/sound/acore/snd-page-alloc.ko): Invalid module format
FATAL: Error inserting snd (/lib/modules/2.6.18-4-486/kernel/sound/acore/snd.ko): Invalid module format
WARNING: Error running install command for snd
WARNING: Error inserting snd_timer (/lib/modules/2.6.18-4-486/kernel/sound/acore/snd-timer.ko): Invalid module format
FATAL: Error inserting snd_pcm (/lib/modules/2.6.18-4-486/kernel/sound/acore/snd-pcm.ko): Invalid module format
WARNING: Error running install command for snd_pcm
WARNING: Error inserting snd_ac97_codec (/lib/modules/2.6.18-4-486/kernel/sound/pci/ac97/snd-ac97-codec.ko): Invalid module format
WARNING: Error inserting snd_seq_device (/lib/modules/2.6.18-4-486/kernel/sound/acore/seq/snd-seq-device.ko): Invalid module format
FATAL: Error inserting snd (/lib/modules/2.6.18-4-486/kernel/sound/acore/snd.ko): Invalid module format
WARNING: Error running install command for snd
WARNING: Error inserting snd_seq_device (/lib/modules/2.6.18-4-486/kernel/sound/acore/seq/snd-seq-device.ko): Invalid module format
FATAL: Error inserting snd_rawmidi (/lib/modules/2.6.18-4-486/kernel/sound/acore/snd-rawmidi.ko): Invalid module format
WARNING: Error running install command for snd_rawmidi
FATAL: Error inserting snd_ca0106 (/lib/modules/2.6.18-4-486/kernel/sound/pci/ca0106/snd-ca0106.ko): Invalid module format
FATAL: Error running install command for snd_ca0106
Setting default volumes...
amixer: Mixer attach default error: No such device


================================================== =============================

Now ALSA is ready to use.
For adjustment of volumes, use your favorite mixer.

Have a lot of fun!


also, lsmod does list soundcore like so..
Module Size Used by
soundcore 8928 0

[JohnT]

Is it possible you had reconfigured or upgraded your kernel before this hard reboot?

[jiggolo182]

only 1 kernel is listed on my system.. and the upgrade did not (or isnt supposed to) do anything to my kernel.. i almost never do anything with my kernel.. everything was working fine so i never had a reason to try and mess with it

[JohnT]

Post the results of running the command:
uname -r

[bwkaz]

i almost never do anything with my kernel.. You should -- new releases fix bugs. Even if you don't notice them, they're still good to fix. :)

In any case, you probably need to replace the modules that are giving the "invalid module format" error. The easiest way to do this is probably to reinstall the kernel? Not sure on what other tools your distro may provide to replace certain files from known-good backups (i.e. the original package file itself off the distro CD). Alternately, you could upgrade the kernel. ;)

(Actually, now that I think about it, the issue may be the modprobe that alsaconf is running. What happens if you /sbin/modprobe snd manually?)

[jiggolo182]

John, `uname -r` returns 2.6.18-4-486

and to bwkaz, here is the output from your command
brandon@wembley:~$ sudo /sbin/modprobe snd
FATAL: Error inserting snd (/lib/modules/2.6.18-4-486/kernel/sound/acore/snd.ko): Invalid module format
FATAL: Error running install command for snd

however, if i change snd to soundcore then it doesnt give me any errors.

i just tried to upgrade my kernel to 2.6.22-2-486 using synaptic (the gui package manager for debian) but when i tried to boot into it, i received an error that it couldnt find the drive. so here i am back in the original kernel.. im more than willing to try out the new kernel but apparently i just dont know how to go about it.. any ideas?

[bwkaz]

Are there any kernels available between 2.6.18-x and 2.6.21-y? I believe it was .21 that changed the device files used for hard drives; maybe your current boot scripts (or initramfs) can't handle that change.

Actually does it help to reinstall the current (.18-x) kernel?

[jiggolo182]

ok, so the 2.6.22-2-486 kernel makes me change /dev/hdb1 to /dev/sdb1 at boot time.. then it came up fine.. however, it did not fix my alsa problem. so im still confused as to what is causing it.. would a dist-upgrade do anything for me? how would i go about rebuilding the kernel?

[bwkaz]

Hmm, OK...

What about reinstalling module-init-tools?

[jiggolo182]

i just tried that but it didnt seem to have any effect.. after reinstalling i tried the alsaconf again but had no luck

[JohnT]

Step by step module options for snd-ca0106.
http://bugtrack.alsa-project.org/main/index.php/Matrix:Module-ca0106

[bwkaz]

Remove modutils (if it's installed)? That's about my last idea, though. The "invalid module format" error shouldn't be happening as long as you're running the modprobe from module-init-tools (not modutils), the modprobe binary hasn't been changed by something, and you're running kernel 2.6.X.

If that doesn't help (or if it's not installed anyway), then see if JohnT's ideas will work. :)

[jiggolo182]

ok, i have tried everything on that alsa link that John posted and removed modutils. everything seems to work during ./configure and make but make install still gives me the invalid format for the sound kernel modules. the 2 kernels im running now are 2.6.18-4-486 and 2.6.22-2-486. the problems exist with both kernels. im thinking a reinstall may be in order next.. ugh! it takes me forever to get stuff set up from a new install...