On 03/04/2012 12:36 AM, Andres Cimmarusti wrote:

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There is active work going on in this area. In fact, I just posted a patch to the PA mailinglist [1]. And yes, we already have it in Ubuntu 11.10 (to probe multiple hdmi devices for Intel and NVidia), and the main reason it took until now to upstream that patch, was the decision to switch jack detection method from input devices to kcontrols.

Thank you for all the references you provided and your work in fixing this issue for all users. I just looked at the git repository for the source code of pulseaudio, but I see your patches have not been included yet. Do you have any estimate of when they will be merged? if so, do you think they'll be included in the next release (do you know when this will be?) ?

I hope they'll be in PulseAudio 2.0, as they are currently waiting for review. For next release, see [2], but judging from the PulseAudio 1.0 release process - no, I don't know when this will be ;-)

I'm considering reassigning this bug to pulseaudio in debian and asking them to include the appropriate patches. Which ones would actually be needed (say, to apply them to pulseaudio 1.1)? would your 6 patches announced on the mailing list in February be enough?

If you want them to apply to PulseAudio 1.1, you can have a look at [1]. The patches currently posted apply to git head. You'll need all of the 06* patches (as well as Linux 3.3 for the kcontrols).

A more light-weight version could be what I did in Ubuntu 11.04, where there was no jack detection, but I just exposed all four devices in PulseAudio and let the user choose manually, like this [4]. (I later renamed that file from "nvidia.conf" to "extra-hdmi.conf", and added the same file to be used for Intel chips.)

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Let me also push for the hda-jack-retask [2] application, which is an easy-to-use GUI for creating these types of firmware files. I advertised it here a while ago [3] but it seems to have gone unnoticed.

This sounds like a good tool for making this happen. I will submit a Request For Package in Debian... but this can take time. Would you consider packaging it there? then it would easily flow into Ubuntu.

Certainly, if there is interest from the Debian side to have it.

I would also not mind if it became a part of upstream ALSA, I think it would make a nice addition to the hda-analyzer, hda-verb etc tool set.

I've encountered other hardware with the same issue recently. It's an NVIDIA card HDA MCP89 on a Macbook Pro 7,1. Is there a method I can follow for crafting my own "patches"? I'm afraid I don't understand how to find the appropriate HEX values that need to go in the [codec] and [pincfg] section.

I think the easiest way is just to download the hda-jack-retask application and build it yourself. Otherwise, [3].

Thanks all for your help.

You're welcome.