ubuntu-audio-dev team mailing list archive

[David Henningsson <launchpad.web@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi folks,

Could use some mentoring on bug #582199 (and probably fix #588031 at the
same time), which is HDA ALC269 hardware enablement for Dell Optiplex
380 (and 980). I haven't started working for Canonical yet, so I'm doing
it in my spare time, and it is the first time I'm that deep into HDA
hardware enablement.

It was not that difficult to figure out what init verbs were needed to
make playback work. Now I'm left with a few options.

1. Another thread poster, after having seen the verbs, suggested that
people download/compile hda-verb and put links to it in /etc/rc.local. I
could improve that for Lucid by packaging hda-verb, and I assume an udev
rule (rather than /etc/rc.local) would be the right place to throw in a
few calls to hda-verb. That would make Lucid users happy, assuming they
would find the bug and read the resolution. But it's just a short-term
solution so I don't know if it's worth doing.

2. For Maverick, we would like to have this in the upstream kernel. The
easiest way just to get playback support, would be to add the verbs as
"fixup verbs", I think. They seem quite easy to get right. The other
option would be to add a separate model, and I guess that's the way to
go if you want auto-mute, etc. However, since that would add more code
(or at least structs!) I'm less certain I would get that right at the
first attempt.

The questions then: The kernel is obviously the right way to go,
long-term. Does a hardware enablement such as the above count as going
into stable? Into an update for Lucid, as a distro patch? And how do I
make it easy for people to test my new kernel patch, so they can confirm
it's working, before I send it to alsa-devel?

// David