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Bug#1023631: firmware-misc-nonfree: Possibly missing firmware for Creative Labs Sound Blaster Z PCIe sound card

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On Monday, 7 November 2022 23:35:44 CET Julian Groß wrote:
> Package: firmware-misc-nonfree
> Version: 20221012-1
> 
> I have been running into weird behaviour on my Creative Labs Sound Blaster Z
> (Serial number either SB1500 or SB1502). Just now I noticed that a
> seemingly related firmware file doesn't get loaded. Here is a section out
> of dmesg:
> 
> [    9.591329] snd_hda_intel 0000:02:00.0: firmware: failed to load
> ctefx-desktop.bin (-2) [    9.591355] firmware_class: See
> https://wiki.debian.org/Firmware for information about missing firmware [  
>  9.591387] snd_hda_intel 0000:02:00.0: firmware: failed to load
> ctefx-desktop.bin (-2) [    9.591409] snd_hda_intel 0000:02:00.0: Direct
> firmware load for ctefx-desktop.bin failed with error -2 [    9.592599]
> snd_hda_intel 0000:02:00.0: firmware: direct-loading firmware ctefx.bin
> 
> ctefx-desktop.bin shows up in the list of firmware that is supposed to be
> included in Debian. https://wiki.debian.org/Firmware/List

ctefx-desktop.bin is not in the upstream firmware repo and (thus) also not in 
Debian's package. I haven't looked closely at that wiki page/script to see 
where it got it from.
https://www.alsa-project.org/files/pub/firmware/ does have that file though.

The error you got is Debian specific, but the last line does show it has loaded 
'a' (fallback) firmware.

> While the driver seems to load a different firmware file, and the sound card
> works most of the time, the identification in lspci seems wrong, and there
> is random issues like no audio output until reboot, "electric" audio output
> until reboot, no audio input until reboot, settings needing to be applied
> multiple times, and alsactl store failing. lspci reports a "Subsystem:
> Creative Labs SB1570 SB Audigy Fx", while this card is from a different
> series and looks completely different from it. Not knowing much about this
> sort of thing, I am assuming the driver is falling back to the firmware for
> a different sound card, which might be causing a bunch of my issues.

There could be several issues at play here. Can you DL via the above mentioned 
URL the latest `alsa-firmware-<version>.tar.bz` and place the ctefx-desktop.bin 
in the appropreate location and see if that resolves this issue?

> -- System Information:
> Debian Release: bookworm/sid
>   APT prefers testing
>   APT policy: (500, 'testing')
> Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
> Foreign Architectures: i386
> 
> Kernel: Linux 6.0.0-2-amd64 (SMP w/12 CPU threads; PREEMPT)
> Kernel taint flags: TAINT_PROPRIETARY_MODULE, TAINT_FIRMWARE_WORKAROUND,
> TAINT_OOT_MODULE, TAINT_UNSIGNED_MODULE

It's also useful to know if there are any changes (for the better) with more 
recent kernels. That can be a 6.1 kernel from Stable or a 6.5+ one from 
Testing/Unstable/Experimental.

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Bug#1023631: firmware-misc-nonfree: Possibly missing firmware for Creative Labs Sound Blaster Z PCIe sound card Diederik de Haas <didi.debian@cknow.org> - 2023-12-19 21:50 +0100

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