Dummy Output in place of my sound device

[godwin_kachi]

Hello everyone.

I am the happiest person to have concluded to move away from windows completely without thinking of the downside (because I didn't try out running a VM ).

Did a few researches and settled for pop_OS! After my installation, everything worked fine except the sound, I have tinkered around pipe wire and PulseAudio but yet it looks like it is a hardware issue - I removed Linux and reinstalled my windows back and everything is working fine, but returning to Linux, my sound won't work.

This happens to pose a serious challenge because I create contents for teaching and will need my sound to be able to record.

I use a zinox phoenix laptop.

Will be grateful if anyone can be of help, please.

 

[Brickwizard]

PUT your pop [or better still [Mint LMDE] USB back in the machine and boot to test mode, run inxi -Fnxxz copy and paste the results back here so we can see what you are working with, [you may have to install inxi and set up the wi-fi whilst in test mode]

I have never seen a zinox laptop, so assume it will be entry level [Rysen 3 or Intel I3]

 

[osprey]

Hello everyone.

I am the happiest person to have concluded to move away from windows completely without thinking of the downside (because I didn't try out running a VM ).

Did a few researches and settled for pop_OS! After my installation, everything worked fine except the sound, I have tinkered around pipe wire and PulseAudio but yet it looks like it is a hardware issue - I removed Linux and reinstalled my windows back and everything is working fine, but returning to Linux, my sound won't work.

This happens to pose a serious challenge because I create contents for teaching and will need my sound to be able to record.

I use a zinox phoenix laptop.

Will be grateful if anyone can be of help, please.

Although Pop!_OS can be used like other independent linux distros, it's designed primarily for System76 systems. It's software is perfectly suited for the hardware that company uses. That said, there are successful installations on other hardware so your hardware may yet be fine.

Here are some observations:

System76 have an audio troubleshoot page here:

Audio Troubleshooting

Here is how to fix several common audio issues with your computer.

support.system76.com

The re-install option has worked for some users which is why it's presented here.

Basically that involves re-installing the following:

apt reinstall pipewire pipewire-pulse wireplumber

These should pull in all that's necessary. To check that it's all there, here's a rundown of everything that needs to be installed for pipewire and wireplumber to run. In the output below, all the "Depends" are essential. The "Recommends" mention of pipewire-pulse is also worth considering for installation since it enables using the utilities in the pulseaudio-utils package, which can also be installed since they can be quite helpful, but it's not essential.

[tom@min ~]$ apt depends pipewire
pipewire
  Depends: libpipewire-0.3-modules (= 1.2.3-1)
  Depends: pipewire-bin (= 1.2.3-1)
  Depends: init-system-helpers (>= 1.52)
  Depends: adduser

[tom@min ~]$ apt depends wireplumber
wireplumber
  Depends: libc6 (>= 2.38)
  Depends: libglib2.0-0t64 (>= 2.68)
  Depends: libpipewire-0.3-0t64 (>= 1.0.2)
  Depends: libwireplumber-0.5-0 (= 0.5.5-1)
  Depends: init-system-helpers (>= 1.52)
 |Depends: <default-dbus-session-bus>
    dbus-user-session
  Depends: <dbus-session-bus>
    dbus-user-session
    dbus-x11
  Depends: pipewire (>= 1.0.2)
  Conflicts: <pipewire-media-session>
  Breaks: asahi-audio (<< 2.0)
  Recommends: pipewire-pulse
  Suggests: libspa-0.2-bluetooth
  Suggests: libspa-0.2-libcamera
  Suggests: wireplumber-doc
  Replaces: <pipewire-media-session>

After having everything relevant re-installed, enable and start it with something like:

systemctl --user --now enable pipewire.service pipewire-pulse.service wireplumber.service

If audio still doesn't work, the very next step is to ensure nothing is muted. One can use the alsamixer program in a terminal to unmute the sound card. If there are still issues, there are further investigations which can be made.

 

[godwin_kachi]

@Brickwizard thanks for your response... Here is what you requested for please

 

[godwin_kachi]

Although Pop!_OS can be used like other independent linux distros, it's designed primarily for System76 systems. It's software is perfectly suited for the hardware that company uses. That said, there are successful installations on other hardware so your hardware may yet be fine.

Here are some observations:

System76 have an audio troubleshoot page here:

Audio Troubleshooting

Here is how to fix several common audio issues with your computer.

support.system76.com

The re-install option has worked for some users which is why it's presented here.

Basically that involves re-installing the following:

apt reinstall pipewire pipewire-pulse wireplumber

These should pull in all that's necessary. To check that it's all there, here's a rundown of everything that needs to be installed for pipewire and wireplumber to run. In the output below, all the "Depends" are essential. The "Recommends" mention of pipewire-pulse is also worth considering for installation since it enables using the utilities in the pulseaudio-utils package, which can also be installed since they can be quite helpful, but it's not essential.

[tom@min ~]$ apt depends pipewire
pipewire
  Depends: libpipewire-0.3-modules (= 1.2.3-1)
  Depends: pipewire-bin (= 1.2.3-1)
  Depends: init-system-helpers (>= 1.52)
  Depends: adduser

[tom@min ~]$ apt depends wireplumber
wireplumber
  Depends: libc6 (>= 2.38)
  Depends: libglib2.0-0t64 (>= 2.68)
  Depends: libpipewire-0.3-0t64 (>= 1.0.2)
  Depends: libwireplumber-0.5-0 (= 0.5.5-1)
  Depends: init-system-helpers (>= 1.52)
 |Depends: <default-dbus-session-bus>
    dbus-user-session
  Depends: <dbus-session-bus>
    dbus-user-session
    dbus-x11
  Depends: pipewire (>= 1.0.2)
  Conflicts: <pipewire-media-session>
  Breaks: asahi-audio (<< 2.0)
  Recommends: pipewire-pulse
  Suggests: libspa-0.2-bluetooth
  Suggests: libspa-0.2-libcamera
  Suggests: wireplumber-doc
  Replaces: <pipewire-media-session>

After having everything relevant re-installed, enable and start it with something like:

systemctl --user --now enable pipewire.service pipewire-pulse.service wireplumber.service

If audio still doesn't work, the very next step is to ensure nothing is muted. One can use the alsamixer program in a terminal to unmute the sound card. If there are still issues, there are further investigations which can be made.

Hello osprey, thank you so much for the feedback...

However, I have actually tested all that was suggested in your post - and it still shows Dummy Output as the output device.

 

[Brickwizard]

Pulse audio is not running, first try @osprey 's solution .

As said previously, Pop is developed specifically for System 76 hardware [what we consider top end business kit] if it works out of the box great, if not you could spend days trying to get it working and still not succeed, so if it doesn't work consider a more rounded distribution, [Mint LMDE,MX-AHS,Ubuntu, or even Parrot home edition]

 

[osprey]

Hello osprey, thank you so much for the feedback...

However, I have actually tested all that was suggested in your post - and it still shows Dummy Output as the output device.

Thanks for that feedback. I assume you've also checked whether the audio system is muted.

The driver sof-audio-pci-intel-cnl which is driving the sound card according to the inxi output appears to need the firmware package: firmware-sof-signed. If that's not installed, you can install it and reboot and see if it makes a difference.

Here are some investigative probes:

To see what controls the sound devices run:

lsof /dev/snd/*
fuser -v /dev/snd/*

To check which is your default sound card run:

aplay -L | grep -i -A2 sysdefault

To check all sound cards seen on the system run:

cat /proc/asound/cards

To see whether the default sound card is being used, open the alsamixer program in a terminal, hit the F6 key, and select the default sound card to set it with enter. After that run:

alsa force-reload

Reboot and see if makes a difference. If there are other sound cards, they can be tried as well.

At least these alsa packages are useful to have installed, so perhaps check that:
alsa-topology-conf
alsa-ucm-conf
alsa-utils
pipewire-alsa

Perhaps return the outputs of the above commands here so that readers can get a clearer idea of what's what. Please use code tags for exact pastes of the outputs. Small differences can make a difference. For use of code tags you can check here: https://www.bbcode.org/how-to-use-bbcode-a-complete-guide.php

 

[godwin_kachi]

Thanks for that feedback. I assume you've also checked whether the audio system is muted.

The driver sof-audio-pci-intel-cnl which is driving the sound card according to the inxi output appears to need the firmware package: firmware-sof-signed. If that's not installed, you can install it and reboot and see if it makes a difference.

Here are some investigative probes:

To see what controls the sound devices run:

lsof /dev/snd/*
fuser -v /dev/snd/*

To check which is your default sound card run:

aplay -L | grep -i -A2 sysdefault

To check all sound cards seen on the system run:

cat /proc/asound/cards

To see whether the default sound card is being used, open the alsamixer program in a terminal, hit the F6 key, and select the default sound card to set it with enter. After that run:

alsa force-reload

Reboot and see if makes a difference. If there are other sound cards, they can be tried as well.

At least these alsa packages are useful to have installed, so perhaps check that:
alsa-topology-conf
alsa-ucm-conf
alsa-utils
pipewire-alsa

Perhaps return the outputs of the above commands here so that readers can get a clearer idea of what's what. Please use code tags for exact pastes of the outputs. Small differences can make a difference. For use of code tags you can check here: https://www.bbcode.org/how-to-use-bbcode-a-complete-guide.php

Thank you so much for your suggestions, I have carried out all that you mentioned and I will be sharing the responses I got here; first for the

lsof /dev/snd/*
COMMAND   PID  USER   FD   TYPE DEVICE SIZE/OFF NODE NAME
pipewire 1653 kachi   59u   CHR  116,1      0t0  498 /dev/snd/seq
pipewire 1653 kachi   60u   CHR  116,1      0t0  498 /dev/snd/seq

fuser -v /dev/snd/*

                     USER        PID ACCESS COMMAND
/dev/snd/seq:        kachi      1653 F.... pipewire

Unfortunately, aplay didn't return anything when I run the command

aplay -L | grep -i -A2 sysdefault

And it looks my distro cant understand if my computer has a sound card or not based on the response from this command

cat /proc/asound/cards
--- no soundcards ---

In anyway, I want to thank all those who in one way or the other offered help, I am grateful and will now start considering switching to one of the distros suggested by @Brickwizard

Thank you all.

 

[Brickwizard]

will now start considering switching

Whatever you try, run it "Live" from the USB in test mode, and check everything is working before you install anything,

 

[Aristarchus]

You probably need to install sof drivers. I have tiger lake (a bit newer) and sof drivers are required.

 

[osprey]

You probably need to install sof drivers. I have tiger lake (a bit newer) and sof drivers are required.

Evidently the sof driver is installed according the output in post #4, but the OP hasn't confirmed whether the relevant firmware from the firmware-sof-signed package is installed, as was proposed in post #7

In any case, alsa can't see any sound cards in the output at post #8, so no sound is possible at that point.