Fedora sound problem on Asus A42F

If you have ASUS A42F or ASUS K42F notebook and it's installed with Fedora, you might experience little problem with your sound system. For example, you can not hear any sound, or built in mic does not work completely. These problem occurs only after Fedora 13 updated to the 2.6.34 kernel with new ALSA driver.

Basically, this problem may occurs on any GNU/Linux system with integrated Intel HDA based audio. But you don't have to worry about this. As a part of open community, what you have to do is let the kernel an ALSA hackers know if you experience some regression after driver update. Please take a look some notes on HD Audio driver. Don't forget to share what you have been done to make your computer can play a song again :)

After upgrading my notebook to Fedora 14, I just found a single problem left, which is built in microphone not working properly. So upgrade to the latest version of Fedora is recommended.

Enough, let's fix this little problem. First, make sure your audio system is activated from the BIOS. Also please make sure your input/output audio is not muted. Second, please check your sound card model with:

cat /proc/asound/card0/codec#* | grep -i codec

If the above command return the same output (see below), you can follow this guide until the end. Otherwise you may take a look another options explained later.

Codec: Realtek ALC269
Codec: Intel IbexPeak HDMI

From the HD Audio Models on Linux Kernel website, this Realtek ALC269 model have some types;

ALC269
======
  basic         Basic preset
  quanta        Quanta FL1
  eeepc-p703    ASUS Eeepc P703 P900A
  eeepc-p901    ASUS Eeepc P901 S101
  fujitsu       FSC Amilo
  lifebook      Fujitsu Lifebook S6420
  auto          auto-config reading BIOS (default)

Now, what you have to do is change the default model to the one working model for your ASUS A42F or ASUS K42F notebook. Here is the results matrix I have tested on Fedora 13.

model	mic	headset	speaker
basic	ok	nok	ok
quanta	ok	nok	ok
eeepc-p703	nok	nok	nok
eeepc-p901	nok	nok	nok
fujitsu	nok	nok	ok
lifebook	ok	ok	ok
auto	nok	nok	nok

From the matrix above, you have to create configuration file to replace the default model when module loaded. Remember, that this kind of modify, need root environment, so please use sudo or su - before command.

• Open Terminal
• Copy-Paste the lines below;
  echo "options snd-hda-intel model=lifebook" >> /etc/modprobe.d/local.conf
  
• close the Terminal, and reboot

After reboot, make sure you can hear your played favourites music through built in speaker and headset. And don't forget to test your microphone. Please note, to work with your built in microphone, you have to change default Input Connector to Microphone 2 on Sound Preferences which accessible from System > Preferences > Sound menu.

Yet another little notes, if you use Pidgin as your Internet Messenger application, make sure you set Method to ALSA instead of the Automatic from the Sounds Options tab on Pidgin Preferences menu.

Enjoy!