Spurred by Elimar's cryptic hint, I did some research on this and found a simple workaround. The upstream bug reference is here: https://bugtrack.alsa-project.org/alsa-bug/view.php?id=2067
There's a hardware feature called DXS which lets the chip play several streams at once. In many VIA chips this is poor quality or even buggy, so the ALSA drivers have a table of which chips don't work or need workarounds. I guess maybe our VT8233/A/8235/8237 AC97 Audio Controller (rev 50) or (rev 60) aren't correctly represented in this table. http://alsa.opensrc.org/index.php?page=via8233 Slackware say that driver versions 1.0.11-rc4 and earlier don't have the problem: http://lwn.net/Articles/181557/ so if you can downgrade to 1.0.10 from snapshot.debian.net it may work for you. Alternatively try disabling the DXS system completely - I have Debian ALSA 1.0.11, I disabled DXS on my rev 50, and I now have sound ! This is how. Possibly some of it is redundant, as I've not kept up with the ever-changing module scene, but it works: Create a file /etc/modutils/00local containing one line: options snd-via82xx dxs_support=2 Run update-modules (in case you have a setup that still uses modules.conf; mine seems to prefer modprobe.d). Link that file into /etc/modprobe.d: # ln -s /etc/modutils/00local /etc/modprobe.d/ Reboot, and enjoy :) The other possible settings for dxs_support are documented at http://alsa.opensrc.org/index.php?page=via8233 and it may be one of them works for you if you absolutely need the DXS feature. Nick -- Googlebait: Sound server fatal error CPU overload, aborting -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
