to tech or not to tech?

As I was bowling in 1 Utama, I showed one of my colleague how well ubuntu 7.04 (feisty) works in my IBM X40. He asked whether can run all those IBM applications in ubuntu or not, and I showed him that actually most buttons work flawlessly without any need in installing any driver/application.

At that time, my icthy hand launch up terminal and try to search for thinkpad related packages through apt-get (credit to 1 Utama's free wifi access). I noticed there's several results which intrigue my interest.

kmilo - laptop special keys support for KDE
gaim-thinklight - Blinks your ThinkPad's ThinkLight upon new messgaes
hdaps-utils - HDAPS (IBM Hard Drive Active Protection System) utilities
kmilo-legacy - non-standard plugins for KMilo
rocklight - an xmms visualization plugin for Thinklights on IBM Thinkpads
thinkpad-base - Configuration files for thinkpad-modules packages
thinkpad-source - Source code for thinkpad-modules packages
tleds - blinks keyboard LEDs for TX and RX network packets
tpb - program to use the IBM ThinkPad(tm) special keys
tpctl - ThinkPad hardware configuration tools
mwavem - Mwave/ACP modem support software

I wonder what's the extra functionality it could provide as my F9 button (eject removable drives) remains unusable. With much bravery, when I back at home, I power up my terminal and install all these packages. Guess what? it's a disaster!!!!!!!!

The thinkpad related packages somehow took over some sound packages (and also the hotkey package where you can control the volume of your speaker) which was set by default, and modify some values which caused my notebook pc speaker to be soundless (not mute). After googling high and low, I've discovered several important tasks I need to do in order to restore my notebook back to the previous state.

1. uninstall thinkpad packages - this can be easily done with

apt-get remove thinkpad-base thinkpad-source tpb tpctl

2. restore sound default settings - this can be done by removing all sound-related packages, and make sure all current settings are purged.

• remove all related package
  

  sudo apt-get --purge remove linux-sound-base alsa-base alsa-utils

• reinstall all related packages
  

  sudo apt-get install linux-sound-base alsa-base alsa-utils

• reinstall extra packages (for ubuntu with gnome)
  

  sudo apt-get install gdm ubuntu-desktop

apparently in gnome environment, the apt-get remove action will eventually remove gdm and ubuntu-desktop packages too.

3. enable sound at startup - this can be done by go to "System -> Administration -> Services", and enable "Audio Settings Management (alsa-utils)".

you need reboot your computer to ensure everything starts to run smoothly.

4. fix the sound quality - after my notebook revived with sound, the sound wasn't up to my expectation, as compared to the prior state of my notebook. For this, a trick can be applied and only works after another reboot.

kill $(lsof -t /dev/dsp* /dev/audio* /dev/mixer* /dev/snd/*) ; sudo modprobe -r $(lsmod |grep ^snd |awk '{print $1}') && sudo modprobe snd-hda-codec && sudo modprobe snd-hda-intel model=auto

alright, I would not deny, I don't really understand what happened with the command mentioned above, but it does solve my problem :)


Moral of the story,
don't make your hand itchy. self-control is a good virtue :P


The fix is not possible without the info from three ubuntu wiki entries:
1. Sound Troubleshooting
2. Debugging Sound Problems
3. Hda Intel Sound Howto