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ALSA not recognizing soundcard when webcam plugged in at boot time

Skype beta now supports video. We purchased some logitech QuickCams to allow them to try out the video. When we plug in the QuickCam after boot, everything works fine. However, if we plug before booting, we lose sound. The problem is with the microphone on the webcam not the webcam driver. snd_usb_audio is loading before the soundcard. I added an index option to snd_usb_audio and voila it works fine after a reboot. Here is my modprobe.conf before and after:
Before:
alias snd-card-0 snd-hda-intel
options snd-card-0 index=0
options snd-hda-intel index=0
remove snd-hda-intel { /usr/sbin/alsactl store 0 >/dev/null 2>&1 || : ; }; /sbin/modprobe -r --ignore-remove snd-hda-intel
After:
alias snd-card-0 snd-hda-intel
alias snd-card-1 snd_usb_audio
options snd-card-0 index=0
options snd-hda-intel index=0
options snd-card-1 index=1
options snd_usb_audio index=1
remove snd-hda-intel { /usr/sbin/alsactl store 0 >/dev/null 2>&1 || : ; }; /sbin/modprobe -r --ignore-remove snd-hda-intel
 One odd thing I noticed is that the file on disk is called snd-hda-intel.ko, but lsmod shows the module name as snd_hda_intel. Curious, it doesn’t seem to matter whether I use underscores or dashes in modprobe.conf either. Someone probably knows why… Here is my src rpm for the gspca driver for the webcam also… gspca-kmod-1.00.20-0.1.2.6.18_53.1.13.el5.src.rpm

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 20th, 2008 at 07:26 and is filed under Linux. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

7 Responses to “ALSA not recognizing soundcard when webcam plugged in at boot time”

  1. Dan Allen Says:
    November 16th, 2008 at 16:02

    Thanks so much! You saved the day! I was getting tired of having to remember what I needed to have unplugged when I booted my computer. I have RHEL5 with a Logitech Quickcam Pro 9000 and this configuration change was just the trick I needed for my regular soundcard to be enabled on boot when leaving the webcam permanently plugged in.

  2. Dan Allen Says:
    November 22nd, 2008 at 20:59

    Rats, although the sound works perfectly in most programs, for some reason Skype will only give me one channel on playback when using this fix. If I leave the webcam unplugged on boot, sound in Skype works as expected. I can’t figure out what the difference is. It must be some minor module.

  3. uphill Says:
    November 23rd, 2008 at 06:12

    hmmm, people here use skype and i haven’t heard this complaint…yet. I’ll have to try this myself, I guess you can tell in the test call?

  4. Marco Says:
    December 31st, 2008 at 17:04

    Excellent! Works for me on Fedora 9 x86_64

  5. Georg Says:
    June 21st, 2009 at 03:35

    Thanks for this nice hint!

  6. Motion Detection Part 1 – Initial Motivation « Not For Production Says:
    August 18th, 2009 at 20:46

    [...] If the webcam is plugged in at boot-time, then system sound does not work properly.  There are a few solutions for this, (adding an index option to modprobe.conf) [...]

  7. playstation eye mic not being loaded after reboot Says:
    July 6th, 2010 at 03:06

    [...] [...]

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