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

[Julian Groß]

Package: firmware-misc-nonfree
Version: 20221012-1
Severity: normal

Dear Maintainer,

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

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.


-- 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
Locale: LANG=de_DE.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=de_DE.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE not set
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /usr/bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)
LSM: AppArmor: enabled

firmware-misc-nonfree depends on no packages.

firmware-misc-nonfree recommends no packages.

Versions of packages firmware-misc-nonfree suggests:
ii initramfs-tools 0.142

-- no debconf information

[Diederik de Haas]

Control: tag -1 moreinfo

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.