Sound not working after R4.1.1 update

fiftyfourthparallel · July 20, 2022, 1:36pm

Long story short:

Using a Dell Inspiron 5593; sound worked on R4.0 and R4.1 for over two years
After updating to R4.1.1, device’s sound output becomes unreliable–works in one VM but not another; sometimes works for a short while after restarting.
Next day, sound has become completely non-functional and a reinstall of pulseaudio-qubes did not help.
Pulseaudio mixer plugin in dom0 shows that sound is still being piped in from the VMs (channel volumes show change), but no amount of tweaking can revive sound on any output device.

Is anyone else experiencing this?

Does anyone have any fixes?

fiftyfourthparallel · July 20, 2022, 2:11pm

One fix I’m trying is downgrading dom0’s kernel from 5.18. However, in R4.1 downgrading is no longer as simple as changing the contents of /boot/efi/EFI/qubes/xen.cfg since the file no longer exists.

The above documentation should be updated (don’t have a Github account):

xen.cfg no longer exists
Grub’s submenu seems to be on by default (changing GRUB_DISABLE_SUBMENU to true doesn’t seem to change anything)
Messing with Grub seems risky–is there an alternative method for changing the default kernel?
Is there a way to just uninstall kernel-latest? E.g. sudo dnf remove kernel-latest? (Not foolhardy enough to find out myself)

fiftyfourthparallel · July 20, 2022, 2:15pm

Downgrading dom0’s kernel from 5.18 to 5.16 seems to have solved the problem.

Will report back if anything changes

DVM · July 20, 2022, 2:19pm

I also had issues with sound cutting off after sometime with the 5.18.x kernels. I’m now using the 5.15 branch and there’s no issue. From what I know, sound issues started with kernel 5.17 and is still not patched.

Related issue:

github.com/QubesOS/qubes-issues

Kernel 5.17.4 on R4.0 Thinkpad W520 - no audio (5.16.18-2 works)

opened 12:00AM - 23 Apr 22 UTC

brendanhoar

T: bug C: kernel P: default hardware support needs diagnosis C: audio regression

### Qubes OS release R4.0 kernel-latest current-testing ### Brief summary T…hinkpad W520 Audio works with kernel 5.16.18-2 Audio does not work with kernel 5.17.4 ### Steps to reproduce Update W520 running R4.0 to kernel-latest in current-testing repo. Notably, I see the following repeated in dmesg under 5.17.4, but I do not see this in dmesg in 5.16.18-2: ``` ...snd_hda_intel swiotlb buffer is full ... ``` ### Expected behavior Audio ### Actual behavior No audio Reverting to 5.16.18-2 during boot temporarily fixes the issue.

fiftyfourthparallel · July 21, 2022, 10:23am

I haven’t mentioned this before, but when I first started using Qubes back in 2020 I faced a very similar issue on R4.0.3 using this same PC.

It went away with time (and patching), but I just didn’t expect it to get re-introduced.

KarlinQubes · July 21, 2022, 10:52am

I’ve had issues with sound cutting off too, although it was always after an absence from the computer. Began after the update, restart returns audio. It hasn’t bothered me greatly.

bidam · August 8, 2022, 11:24am

I have the same issue. Could you please let me know how you downgraded the kernel? I’m a bit lost too at this step, I couldn’t find the cfg file.

Edit : Nevermind I figured it out. It’s working by editing /etc/default/grub.
It seems it fixed the sound issue for me as well.

fiftyfourthparallel · August 11, 2022, 10:52am

On the light blue screen that appears immediately after boot, before the grey splash screen, you are given the option to configure how your system boots. Among the choices is one that lets you boot dom0 with an older kernel.