Wireless and Sound Problems with HP Pavilion dv7 and Fedora Core 10

I have just bought a new HP Pavilion dv7 notebook (17", AMD Turion) and installed Fedora Core 10. I would like to add that i installed a completely eyecandy-less base system, only then installed a naked x-org Xserver and mwm (Motif Window Manager) on top of it. There is neither KDE nor GNOME nor any other of the fancy desktops installed (i like my desktops as raw as my steaks ;-)) ).

It works fine so far (see some system information attached below, i will gladly add whatever is needed to that upon request) i just have two problems remaining unsolved:

My first problem is i cannot get the audio system to work. I installed all the ALSA drivers and software (see below for the list of packages) and i installed pulseaudio as well. I also made sure the volume control is up via "alsamixer". I read some troubleshooting guides but basically they all tell you how to use KDE or some similar desktop to do it. I would really appreciate not to have to install a whole desktop system just to turn on some hardware or configure some driver respectively.

The second problem is the wireless LAN adapter. It works insofar as i see a wlan0 device and a wmaster0 device, but i cannot get it to connect to my wireless router. I can connect without problems using a CAT6 cable, though. Similar as said above applies to here: i would prefer not having to install some desktop only to configure a hardware or driver. If someone could explain what to do in terms of "write this to that file and execute 'command' then" i would be very indebted.

Many thanks for your suggestions.

bakunin

Appendix: Systems information:

[root@system ~] # uname -a
Linux brecht.rote-armee.com 2.6.27.9-159.fc10.x86_64 #1 SMP Tue Dec 16 14:47:52 EST 2008 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

[root@system ~] # lspci00:00.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] RS780 Host Bridge
00:02.0 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] RS780 PCI to PCI bridge (ext gfx port 0)
00:04.0 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] RS780 PCI to PCI bridge (PCIE port 0)
00:05.0 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] RS780 PCI to PCI bridge (PCIE port 1)
00:06.0 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] RS780 PCI to PCI bridge (PCIE port 2)
00:07.0 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] RS780 PCI to PCI bridge (PCIE port 3)
00:11.0 SATA controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB700/SB800 SATA Controller [AHCI mode]
00:12.0 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB700/SB800 USB OHCI0 Controller
00:12.1 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB700/SB800 USB OHCI1 Controller
00:12.2 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB700/SB800 USB EHCI Controller
00:13.0 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB700/SB800 USB OHCI0 Controller
00:13.1 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB700/SB800 USB OHCI1 Controller
00:13.2 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB700/SB800 USB EHCI Controller
00:14.0 SMBus: ATI Technologies Inc SBx00 SMBus Controller (rev 3a)
00:14.1 IDE interface: ATI Technologies Inc SB700/SB800 IDE Controller
00:14.2 Audio device: ATI Technologies Inc SBx00 Azalia
00:14.3 ISA bridge: ATI Technologies Inc SB700/SB800 LPC host controller
00:14.4 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc SBx00 PCI to PCI Bridge
00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 11h HyperTransport Configuration (rev 40)
00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 11h Address Map
00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 11h DRAM Controller
00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 11h Miscellaneous Control
00:18.4 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 11h Link Control
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Mobilitiy Radeon HD 3400 Series
01:00.1 Audio device: ATI Technologies Inc RV620 Audio device [Radeon HD 34xx Series]
08:00.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): JMicron Technologies, Inc. Device 2380
08:00.1 System peripheral: JMicron Technologies, Inc. Device 2382
08:00.2 SD Host controller: JMicron Technologies, Inc. Device 2381
08:00.3 System peripheral: JMicron Technologies, Inc. Device 2383
08:00.4 System peripheral: JMicron Technologies, Inc. Device 2384
09:00.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications Inc. AR242x 802.11abg Wireless PCI Express Adapter (rev 01)
0a:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller (rev 02)

Can you bring up an wireless connection manually with iwconfig?

For sound, you could try the following in /etc/modprode.d/sound (or whatever filename is appropriate on fedora)

options snd slots=snd-hda-intel
options snd-hda-intel enable_msi=1 model=hp-m4
alias snd-card-1 snd-hda-intel

then run

update-modules -f

You can run a command line speaker test with

speaker-test -Dplug:front -c2 -l5 -twav

First off, thanks for mentioning it, lacking Linux experience i didn't know this command.

As it is, it didn't work. Here is what i did:

ifconfig wlan0 up
iwconfig wlan0 key s:<my-key>
iwconfig wlan0 essid <my-essid>
dhclient wlan0

All these commands proceeded without error, but there was still no wireless connection after that.

I found a file /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base and modified it according to your suggestions. In fact it had a single line "options snd-hda-intel enable_msi=1" already in it.

Alas "update-modules" is not available on my system. I investigated and to my current information it is a tool solely used on S390 systems. If it is available on PC systems too where can i download it? Anyway, i rebooted, which should have the same effect but still no luck with the sound.

I ran this command but it hangs indefinitely:

[root@mysystem ~]# speaker-test -Dplug:front -c2 -l5 -twav

speaker-test 1.0.18

Playback device is plug:front
Stream parameters are 48000Hz, S16_LE, 2 channels
WAV file(s)
Rate set to 48000Hz (requested 48000Hz)
Buffer size range from 64 to 16384
Period size range from 32 to 8192
Using max buffer size 16384
Periods = 4
was set period_size = 4096
was set buffer_size = 16384
 0 - Front Left

bakunin