Fedora 11 and Creative Sound Cards (Rant)

[jedimasterk]

Real good Fedora Team!. I can see why your distributions are just plain Betaware!. Got this reply to a post from the Ubuntu forums about Fedora 11. Real Good!!. What are we suppose to just use onboard sound?!.

"
If you have a Soundblaster Live! or Audigy soundcard (that uses the emu10k1 drivers) you will have a horrible experience with F11. You will have kernel failures. I, and several others, filed at bug report at bugzilla and no one even triaged it. All I hear, weeks after the bug reports, are crickets chirping."

Can't you get anything right for a release?!.

[rclark]

Interesting if true. That is all I have in both my Linux boxes is the Sound Blaster Live cards as in the past Linux has had trouble with the onboard sound hardware. Linux has always been good to me as long as I used sound blaster technology.... We'll have to see....

[AdamW]

It's not accurate.

The bug has been assigned to the kernel team, whose responsibility it is. The issue only affects S/PDIF output, while the vast majority of people use analog output. If you use analog output you will not be affected by this at all.

Bug is https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=502698 .

edit - worth noting that there's an intersecting bug where the hardware defaults to digital output, so you have to flip it to analog if that's what you have - see https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Common_F11_bugs#emu10k1-digital . That one we should get a fix for quite soon.

[YeOK]

Real good Fedora Team!. I can see why your distributions are just plain Betaware!. Got this reply to a post from the Ubuntu forums about Fedora 11. Real Good!!. What are we suppose to just use onboard sound?!.

"
If you have a Soundblaster Live! or Audigy soundcard (that uses the emu10k1 drivers) you will have a horrible experience with F11. You will have kernel failures. I, and several others, filed at bug report at bugzilla and no one even triaged it. All I hear, weeks after the bug reports, are crickets chirping."

Can't you get anything right for a release?!.

What a guy, taking up the concerns of the Ubuntu forum and bringing them here to the good people of the Fedora forums.

:rolleyes:

My Creative Live is working great, once you switch it to analogue the pulseaudio changes shine through. I'm sure the kernel people will have the Digital fixed soon.

[Demz]

Ubungu user stay in your own territory .

if Ubuntu users have complaints let them come here an complain themselves instead of getting a puppet to do it for them

[gadgetwiz]

The bug has been assigned to the kernel team, whose responsibility it is. The issue only affects S/PDIF output, while the vast majority of people use analog output. If you use analog output you will not be affected by this at all.

Thanks.

This the message I get with an original SB (EMU10k1) Live card.

Kernel failure message 1:
ALSA sound/core/pcm_lib.c:166: BUG: stream = 0, pos = 0x2000, buffer size = 0x2000, period size = 0x2000
ALSA sound/core/pcm_lib.c:166: BUG: stream = 0, pos = 0x2000, buffer size = 0x2000, period size = 0x2000
ALSA sound/core/pcm_lib.c:166: BUG: stream = 0, pos = 0x2000, buffer size = 0x2000, period size = 0x2000
ALSA sound/core/pcm_lib.c:166: BUG: stream = 0, pos = 0x2001, buffer size = 0x2000, period size = 0x2000
ALSA sound/core/pcm_lib.c:166: BUG: stream = 0, pos = 0x2000, buffer size = 0x2000, period size = 0x2000
ALSA sound/core/pcm_lib.c:166: BUG: stream = 0, pos = 0x2000, buffer size = 0x2000, period size = 0x2000
ALSA sound/core/pcm_lib.c:166: BUG: stream = 0, pos = 0x2000, buffer size = 0x2000, period size = 0x2000
ALSA sound/core/pcm_lib.c:166: BUG: stream = 0, pos = 0x2000, buffer size = 0x2000, period size = 0x2000
ALSA sound/core/pcm_lib.c:166: BUG: stream = 0, pos = 0x2001, buffer size = 0x2000, period size = 0x2000
ALSA sound/core/pcm_lib.c:166: BUG: stream = 0, pos = 0x2000, buffer size = 0x2000, period size = 0x2000
fuse init (API version 7.11)


Kernel failure message 2:
ALSA sound/core/pcm_lib.c:166: BUG: stream = 0, pos = 0x2000, buffer size = 0x2000, period size = 0x2000
ALSA sound/core/pcm_lib.c:166: BUG: stream = 0, pos = 0x2000, buffer size = 0x2000, period size = 0x2000
ALSA sound/core/pcm_lib.c:166: BUG: stream = 0, pos = 0x2000, buffer size = 0x2000, period size = 0x2000
ALSA sound/core/pcm_lib.c:166: BUG: stream = 0, pos = 0x2001, buffer size = 0x2000, period size = 0x2000
ALSA sound/core/pcm_lib.c:166: BUG: stream = 0, pos = 0x2000, buffer size = 0x2000, period size = 0x2000
ALSA sound/core/pcm_lib.c:166: BUG: stream = 0, pos = 0x2000, buffer size = 0x2000, period size = 0x2000
ALSA sound/core/pcm_lib.c:166: BUG: stream = 0, pos = 0x2000, buffer size = 0x2000, period size = 0x2000
ALSA sound/core/pcm_lib.c:166: BUG: stream = 0, pos = 0x2000, buffer size = 0x2000, period size = 0x2000
ALSA sound/core/pcm_lib.c:166: BUG: stream = 0, pos = 0x2001, buffer size = 0x2000, period size = 0x2000
ALSA sound/core/pcm_lib.c:166: BUG: stream = 0, pos = 0x2000, buffer size = 0x2000, period size = 0x2000
fuse init (API version 7.11)
SELinux: initialized (dev fuse, type fuse), uses genfs_contexts

Moving to analog on both the input/output had no effect. Guess I'll have to wait for an updated kernel.

Actually, I've had Fedora sound issues since the inclusion of pulseaudio.

Since Fedora 10, the volumes of various applications will reset to 100% or some extremely loud level for no apparent reason. The is no consistency in volume levels from one app to another or any consistency on how those levels are set and controlled.

I seem to be experiencing these same issues with Fedora 11.

[jedimasterk]

Every time I installed Linux on my system with pulse audio. I have had to remove pulse audio and install esound just to get the sound to work. This has been going on since pulse audio came out. I own a Creative SoundBlaster Audigy Gamer sound card. My question is this?. What soundcards work flawlessly with pulse audio, out of the box?.

[Demz]

look at the pulseaudio wiki site

[rookcifer]

What a guy, taking up the concerns of the Ubuntu forum and bringing them here to the good people of the Fedora forums.

:rolleyes:

My Creative Live is working great, once you switch it to analogue the pulseaudio changes shine through. I'm sure the kernel people will have the Digital fixed soon.

I am the one who made that post on the Ubuntu forums and, no, I did not send this guy over here (he obviously has a hatred of Fedora for some reason). I have moved to Kubuntu until/if this emu10k1 issue gets solved in Fedora. I do have to admit that I find it odd that this "kernel bug" disappears as soon as Pulseaudio is removed. The problem is that Pulseaudio cannot be removed in F11 like it could in F10 (it can be removed but it doesn't solve my problems like it did in F10). When I remove it in F11, I still have no control over my volume or alsa mixer settings. One would think that if this was a kernel bug that removing Pulseaudio would not stop the kernel failures. But it does.

Fedora is a great distro and it irks me that I have to switch distros over a kernel failure, but such is life.

Thanks.

This the message I get with an original SB (EMU10k1) Live card.

Gadgetwiz, I started a bug report about this. Please post over there (https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=502698) so we can get as many people complaining about this as possible.

[AdamW]

"One would think that if this was a kernel bug that removing Pulseaudio would not stop the kernel failures. But it does. "

Why would one think that? Software often exposes bugs in other software. There was a bug shortly before Fedora 11 where certain webpages in Firefox would cause the system to nearly hang. Turned out it was because these pages had 15,000 pixel high elements in them, which was causing the graphics card driver to barf. The bug there is in the graphics card driver, exposed by Firefox via the braindead design of the web page in question. Do we therefore say that the bug is in Firefox? No. The bug's in the graphics driver. Firefox just exposed it.

Same deal here - PA is exposing a kernel bug of some kind. When you're getting error messages from the kernel, there's a bug in the kernel. Doesn't matter what software _triggered_ it (except insofar as it helps isolate the issue).

gadgetwiz, are you the same guy who noted it still fails in analog mode on the original bug, or a different guy? This is important, I'm trying to figure out whether it often fails in analog mode too, or whether that's an unusual exception. Multiple people reported it works in analog mode, so something odd's going on there.

[Cheval]

I'm getting the same thing.

Kernel failure message 1:
ALSA sound/core/pcm_lib.c:166: BUG: stream = 0, pos = 0x2000, buffer size = 0x2000, period size = 0x2000
ALSA sound/core/pcm_lib.c:166: BUG: stream = 0, pos = 0x2000, buffer size = 0x2000, period size = 0x2000
ALSA sound/core/pcm_lib.c:166: BUG: stream = 0, pos = 0x2001, buffer size = 0x2000, period size = 0x2000



Kernel failure message 2:
ALSA sound/core/pcm_lib.c:166: BUG: stream = 0, pos = 0x2000, buffer size = 0x2000, period size = 0x2000
ALSA sound/core/pcm_lib.c:166: BUG: stream = 0, pos = 0x2001, buffer size = 0x2000, period size = 0x2000


Kernel failure message 3:
ALSA sound/core/pcm_lib.c:166: BUG: stream = 0, pos = 0x2000, buffer size = 0x2000, period size = 0x2000
ALSA sound/core/pcm_lib.c:166: BUG: stream = 0, pos = 0x2000, buffer size = 0x2000, period size = 0x2000
ALSA sound/core/pcm_lib.c:166: BUG: stream = 0, pos = 0x2000, buffer size = 0x2000, period size = 0x2000
ALSA sound/core/pcm_lib.c:166: BUG: stream = 0, pos = 0x2000, buffer size = 0x2000, period size = 0x2000
ALSA sound/core/pcm_lib.c:166: BUG: stream = 0, pos = 0x2000, buffer size = 0x2000, period size = 0x2000
ALSA sound/core/pcm_lib.c:166: BUG: stream = 0, pos = 0x2001, buffer size = 0x2000, period size = 0x2000
ALSA sound/core/pcm_lib.c:166: BUG: stream = 0, pos = 0x2001, buffer size = 0x2000, period size = 0x2000
ALSA sound/core/pcm_lib.c:166: BUG: stream = 0, pos = 0x2001, buffer size = 0x2000, period size = 0x2000
ALSA sound/core/pcm_lib.c:166: BUG: stream = 0, pos = 0x2001, buffer size = 0x2000, period size = 0x2000
ALSA sound/core/pcm_lib.c:166: BUG: stream = 0, pos = 0x2000, buffer size = 0x2000, period size = 0x2000
fuse init (API version 7.11)
SELinux: initialized (dev fuse, type fuse), uses genfs_contexts
__ratelimit: 10 callbacks suppressed
ALSA sound/core/pcm_lib.c:166: BUG: stream = 0, pos = 0x2000, buffer size = 0x2000, period size = 0x2000
ALSA sound/core/pcm_lib.c:166: BUG: stream = 0, pos = 0x2000, buffer size = 0x2000, period size = 0x2000
ALSA sound/core/pcm_lib.c:166: BUG: stream = 0, pos = 0x2000, buffer size = 0x2000, period size = 0x2000
ALSA sound/core/pcm_lib.c:166: BUG: stream = 0, pos = 0x2000, buffer size = 0x2000, period size = 0x2000
ALSA sound/core/pcm_lib.c:166: BUG: stream = 0, pos = 0x2000, buffer size = 0x2000, period size = 0x2000

I have a SBLive in there and am not trying to use digital or anything. This is what it shows after a clean install and first boot without anything touched. I never had problems before (exception: pulseaudio) with previous Fedora versions. I haven't made it far enough to see if Pulseaudio gives everything I watch the usual Tourette's Syndrome but hopefully that's gone in FC11.

Edit: yup any time I go to play something that makes a sound then that kernel failure box appears.

[Shunyata]

Same problem with a Creative X-Fi Extreme Music using Public US 1.00 Beta Drivers: Worked fine in F10, now I get kernel failures every time I start a program which makes a sound. Deinstalled the driver - no more kernel failures, reinstalled it - problems reappeared (reports sent). The problem that application sound is EXTREMELY LOUD by default appears as well: Especially annoying with flash since you often can't regulate the volume there. Would really appreciate a solution...

[Demz]

solution, buy a different Soundcard an get rid of anything Creative.

[gadgetwiz]

gadgetwiz, are you the same guy who noted it still fails in analog mode on the original bug, or a different guy? This is important, I'm trying to figure out whether it often fails in analog mode too, or whether that's an unusual exception. Multiple people reported it works in analog mode, so something odd's going on there.
Yes, I still received the message after moving to analog mode. I haven't saw the message again but I think I told it not to notify me again, as it was annoying as hell, but I can take a look and post back any logs you direct me to, if that will help.

I do have sound on the system but as Shunyata reports, and I mentioned earlier, the volumes of various applications will reset to 100% or some extremely loud level for no apparent reason (even though the app's volume control is set to 1%). The is very little consistency in volume levels from one app to another or any consistency on how those levels are set and controlled.

[mrwinkee]

What a guy, taking up the concerns of the Ubuntu forum and bringing them here to the good people of the Fedora forums.

:rolleyes:

My Creative Live is working great, once you switch it to analogue the pulseaudio changes shine through. I'm sure the kernel people will have the Digital fixed soon.

How do you switch it to analog?

[mrwinkee]

Every time I installed Linux on my system with pulse audio. I have had to remove pulse audio and install esound just to get the sound to work. This has been going on since pulse audio came out. I own a Creative SoundBlaster Audigy Gamer sound card. My question is this?. What soundcards work flawlessly with pulse audio, out of the box?.

How do you uninstall Pulse Audio and install esound? And will that solve the problem?

[Demz]

just do a yum remove pulseaudio but it may take Deps with it, becarefull if it does, it may kill all sound all together

[AdamW]

switch to analog: use pavucontrol (see https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Common_F11_bugs#emu10k1-digital ).

if you really have to disable pulseaudio, the safest way to do so is probably to uninstall alsa-plugins-pulseaudio . that will stop alsa output being redirected via pulseaudio, it will go via regular alsa instead. but I'm not sure that would actually help here, I think this problem is below the PA level.

[Cheval]

solution, buy a different Soundcard an get rid of anything Creative.

Believe me I am NO fan of Creative crap, but this one isn't their fault. I've had a SBLive in Fedora since FC 4 and it's worked GREAT all the way up to FC 10. Creative stuff on Linux has always been good AFAIK, while their windows stuff has SUCKED because of driver crap (I can still remember the hundred+ BSODs I got with the offending file being EMU10k.sys). I dumped creative stuff on windows probably 5+ years ago. I use the Asus Xonar D2 card and LOVE it.

Anyway this seems to be Fedora's fault since it worked fine for the last 7 Fedora releases.

[YeOK]

How do you switch it to analog?

Sorry, only just seen your message.

http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showpost.php?p=1217604&postcount=68

[gadgetwiz]

Well, I'm not sure what's up with the hostility toward creative in this thread but I have found their sound cards and media players (I have a zen micro) to be excellent products which work equally well in Windows or Linux. For many years, the sounds blaster was the standard by which all sound cards were judged and I couldn't be happier with my Zen Micro.

Yes, more recently there were some driver issues in Windows but what else is new? :cool: I never use Windows (unless I'm being paid) so that's not really an issue for me at this point.

I'm sure the kernel errors will be resolved soon but they haven't precluded sound from working on my card so I'm cool with that.

I do believe the volume control issues discussed here are not limited to creative sound cards but are an issue with pulseaudio and it's interaction with various apps.

These issues seems to be contentious and I found the following to be some interesting reading on the topic....

PulseAudio: A Hearty and Robust Exchange of Ideas (http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue173#PulseAudio:_A_Hearty_and_Robust_Exchange_ of_Ideas)

The Great Pulseaudio Mixer Debate (http://www.linux-archive.org/fedora-development/289266-great-pulseaudio-mixer-debate-modest-productive-proposal.html)

The Great Mixer Debate (or, Where Did All My Sliders Go?) (http://www.happyassassin.net/2009/04/27/the-great-mixer-debate-or-where-did-all-my-sliders-go/)
.
.

[Zone3]

Try this X-FI owners

ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/tiwai/snapshot/alsa-driver-unstable-snapshot.tar.gz
extract
$ ./configure --with-cards=ctxfi
$ make
$ make install
reboot
worked for me. even showing promising signs of 5.1

[Demz]

thats good there working on the driver for x-fi cards

[rookcifer]

Adam, et al, where do you guys think this problem is? Is it the emu10k1 kernel module or is it in ALSA somewhere? I have tried my hardest to get in contact with the emu10k1 developers but I can't find any contact info on their sourceforge page. I even went to their IRC channel and no one has posted a single message in days. Is this driver even actively maintained?

And for those who have this issue with Creative cards throwing kernel failures (and in case you didn't see my earlier post) please post your details to this bug thread (https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=502698).

[Cheval]

I posted comment #8 in that thread.

I got sick of this (and one of my DVD drives saying every DVD/CD that I put in it is BLANK! Even the Fedora DVD!) so I went to latest Ubuntu. That had the usual problems (I have 2 gigabit and one wireless and I just can't get all 3 working right in it) so I came back to Fedora. I installed it and the strange thing is I changed the input/output like the common issues page says to do and I have sound now. That stupid kernel failure box still comes up though and I still have the blank dvd/cd issue with one of the drives (Worked fine in FC10).:rolleyes:

[mrwinkee]

solution, buy a different Soundcard an get rid of anything Creative.

Maybe a better solution is to find a Distro that works with your hardware. Otherwise you may wind up building a new computer.

I tested out both Fedora 11 and Ubuntu 9.04. Both had some issues. In wireless they both would not reconnect automatically on roboot with a wmp11 802.11B. But you could do that manually. Both also had an issue with network-manager when pressing "make available to all users". But you could easily mitigate this. After reboot just press an icon to connect.

As for the sound, it all worked great in Ubuntu and nada in Fedora.

And then Fedora ships with Beta software. Sure I like the latest and greatest but I do not want to be a Pioneer for Red Hat. Some say that Fedora 11 and maybe 12 are like release candidates or gold for the next version of Red Hat. Of course they say the same thing about Suse.

But the sound issue turns me off. On that particular machine that has a Creative card I cannot see going with Fedora because that person wants to pay music so on that machine it is Ubuntu 9.04.

Fedora does have better more organized documentation but is also lacking documentation (it is not written) about keyring-seahorse.

Next I need to decide between other clients on Fedora 11 vs Ubuntu 9.04 and then the biggie. Fedora Server vs Ubuntu server.

To summarize:

Changing hardware does not always make for the best choice when there are other alternatives.

[durangowildlife]

Using the Creative X-FI USB's optical out port and haven't experienced any major issues -- unlike FC10. There are occasional glitches and pops, but I think this is due to Pulse -- no pops when using mplayer -ao alsa. There are other ways of getting sound to a coaxial/optical jack if that's all you need, e.g., Hagerman USB.

[Louisda16th]

I get a lot of kernel failures too. Plus the sound is sometimes distorted. I have a Creative X-Fi Elite Pro. Never had much of a problem with the beta driver on Fedora 10.

[Louisda16th]

I tried installing the alsa driver as per post #22. However that didn't solve the problem either so I decided to switch back to the Creative driver. But while running make install, I get the following error:

FATAL: Error inserting ctxfi (/lib/modules/2.6.29.4-167.fc11.x86_64/kernel/drivers/ssound/ctxfi.ko): Unknown symbol in module, or unknown parameter (see dmesg)

How do I install the creative driver now? I ran make uninstall and make clean for the alsa driver but that didn't take care of the problem.
Thanks!

[AdamW]

Adam, et al, where do you guys think this problem is? Is it the emu10k1 kernel module or is it in ALSA somewhere? I have tried my hardest to get in contact with the emu10k1 developers but I can't find any contact info on their sourceforge page. I even went to their IRC channel and no one has posted a single message in days. Is this driver even actively maintained?

And for those who have this issue with Creative cards throwing kernel failures (and in case you didn't see my earlier post) please post your details to this bug thread (https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=502698).

Well, sort of both :)

emu10k1 is dead - that's the old OSS/Free module. As you guessed, no-one works on that stuff any more.

However, that's not what Fedora uses. What Fedora uses is snd-emu10k1 , which is not the same thing. It's the ALSA module for the emu10k1 chipset.

The actual drivers from ALSA are part of the kernel; not just in Fedora, but upstream, now, for the last several releases. So, you see why I say the bug's in ALSA and the kernel. :)

This is why the report is assigned to the 'kernel' package - because the ALSA sound drivers are part of the kernel package in Fedora - and to Jaroslav Kysela, who is the Fedora ALSA maintainer, including dealing with the kernel module side of ALSA. I have emailed him to ask him to treat this issue as a priority, but honestly it's hard to be sure how fast he'll be able to address it. We really could do with a couple more ALSA engineers. Actually, the Linux world in general could do with a couple more ALSA engineers...

[Louisda16th]

The latest PulseAudio update fixed the distortion. I guess I'll stick to alsa for now :)

[LostSon]

whats odd is if i use gnome it doesnt work correctly volume management anyway, but if i use kde it works just fine.

[AdamW]

That's not really odd, as GNOME's default volume control in F11 is a PA-based one, and KDE's isn't.

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Common_F11_bugs#alsa-volume

[jimtwest3]

I installed a Sound Blaster X-Fi sound card in my Fedora 11, because Fedora has always supported Creative Lab Sound Blaster sound cards. First Fedora 11 did not have the modules to support this card, so it was not loaded. Then I downloaded the Linux module source files from Creative Labs. After compiling the Linux moudle to support the Sound Blaster X-Fi sound card, loading them caused Fedora 11 to issue kernel failure warnings. OK, back to the drawing board. This is not good.

[fnarfnar]

Hello,

I'm having an awful time trying to work out the heck I get this card working.

kernel = 2.6.30.10-105.fc11.i686.PAE
alsa-lib = alsa-lib-1.0.21-2.fc10

I cannot find snd-ctxfi in the default area anywhere.
I cannot find it in the alsa-lib sources or the kernel sources.

I would like to rebuild this using the FC sources, but am unsure which to use.

yum provides give me nothing useful either.

I would appreciate any assistance.

Thank you.

[Demz]

those drivers went into kernel 2.6.31 not .30 thats why you cant find them