LTSP | Sound on Compaq ENSFF PCs

Posted in: technology. Tagged: ltsp, sound

We have a number of Compaq Deskpro ENSFF P450s for which sound stopped working since our LTSP5 Upgrade. I spent some time this morning solving this problem and have detailed my solution below.

The bulk of the fix was simply changing SMODULE_01 to MODULE_01 in LTS.conf, although this particular PC was a little more involved.

Configure Compaq Deskpro ENSFF for LTSP5 Sound

Introduction

We have a number of Compaq Deskpro EN-SFF P450 PCs. These are small-form-factor Pentium IIIs with Compaq quality. I believe these have the ESS1869 soundcard.

The BIOS settings on our PCs are io=0x220 irq=5 dma=1 dma16=5; your settings may be different!

LTSP4.2

They worked flawlessly under LTSP4.2 with the following LTS.conf configuration:

SMODULE_01         = "snd-es18xx irq=5"

Since upgrading to LTSP5, sound has ceased to function.

Testing

I booted the client and typed [Ctrl]+[Alt]+[F1] to bring up the client console and typed:

# lsmod | grep snd

Which returned nothing, showing that sound was definitely not loaded (no surprise there!).

Next I tried typing:

# modprobe snd-es18xx
ESS AudioDrive ES18xx soundcard not found or device busy
FATAL: Error inserting snd_es18xx (/lib/modules/2.6.18-6-486/kernel/sound/isa/snd-es18xx.ko): No such device

Research

• http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=148077

This was not specific to LTSP5, nevertheless it gave a useful configuration:

/etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base

alias char-major-116 snd
alias snd-card-0 snd-es18xx
options snd-es18xx index=0 enable=1 isapnp=0 port=0x220 mpu_port=0x388 fm_port=0x330 irq=5 dma1=1 dma2=0

alias char-major-14 soundcore
alias sound-slot-0 snd-card-0

alias sound-service-0-0 snd-mixer-oss
alias sound-service-0-1 snd-seq-oss
alias sound-service-0-3 snd-pcm-oss
alias sound-service-0-8 snd-seq-oss
alias sound-service-0-12 snd-pcm-oss

In particular the following line looked useful:

options snd-es18xx index=0 enable=1 isapnp=0 port=0x220 mpu_port=0x388 fm_port=0x330 irq=5 dma1=1 dma2=0

Still in the client console I typed:

# modprobe snd-es18xx index=0 enable=1 isapnp=0 port=0x220 mpu_port=0x388 fm_port=0x330 irq=5 dma1=1 dma2=0

And the sound module loaded fine. I then ran:

# speaker-test
speaker-test 1.0.13
Playback device is default
Stream parameters are 48000Hz, S16_LE, 1 channels
Using 16 octaves of pink noise
...

And sound was working fine.

LTS.conf

So obviously all we need to do is to set in LTS.conf and we should be sorted:

SMODULE_01         = "snd-es18xx index=0 enable=1 isapnp=0 port=0x220 mpu_port=0x388 fm_port=0x330 irq=5 dma1=1 dma2=0"

But no joy! Thinking that the issue was with an incompatibility with one of the above switches and LTSP, I experimented with removing all the switches and just adding some back; the aim being to end up with a minimal set of switches that worked. On a hunch I tried:

# modprobe snd-es18xx isapnp=0

And the speaker-test worked. Adding this to LTS.conf

SMODULE_01         = "snd-es18xx isapnp=0"

And it still didn’t work. For some reason, that I cannot find documented, SMODULE is no longer working, and needs replacing with MODULE - thus:

MODULE_01         = "snd-es18xx isapnp=0"

All now working.