Re: [REGRESSION][BISECTED] My audio broke (was: [PATCH 05/27] ALSA: hda: Move controller drivers into sound/hda/controllers directory)

Takashi Iwai
2025-10-16T09:52:48Z

On Thu, 16 Oct 2025 08:03:08 +0200,
Askar Safin wrote:
>
> I did another experiment.
> This time with v6.18-rc1.
> And I collected more info.
> - Here is Debian config for 6.17.2: [attachment config-6.17.2-amd64]
> - I downloaded vanilla Linux v6.18-rc1 from kernel.org
> - I copied that Debian config (see above) as .config to Linux sources
> - I did "LOCALVERSION=-first make --silent -j32 < /dev/null" ("< /dev/null",
> because I don't want to answer any questions)
> - This is output: [attachment first-out]
> - Then I booted into it
> - Audio works
> - Here is config of this kernel: [attachment config-6.18.0-rc1-first]
> - Here is "find /lib/modules/6.18.0-rc1-first": [attachment
> find-6.18.0-rc1-first]
> - Here is alsa-info: [attachment alsa-info-first]
> - Here is lsmod: [attachment first-lsmod]
> - Then I "cd" into kernel source (note that ".config" remained since last time)
> - I typed "make localmodconfig < /dev/null"
> - Here is output: [attachment localmodconfig-out]
> - I did "LOCALVERSION=-second make --silent -j32"
> - This command didn't produce any output and didn't ask any questions
> - Then I booted into new kernel
> - Audio doesn't work
> - Here is config of this kernel: [attachment config-6.18.0-rc1-second]
> - Here is "find /lib/modules/6.18.0-rc1-second": [attachment
> find-6.18.0-rc1-second]
> - Here is alsa-info: [attachment alsa-info-second]
> - Here is lsmod: [attachment second-lsmod]
>
> (Please, say me, if there are any missing files.)
>
> If you need more experiments, ask me.

Thanks for detailed logs! Now the situation became clearer.

Could you try to just enable CONFIG_SND_SOC_SOF_ALDERLAKE=m on top of
the broken config? If my guess is right, this should make the audio
working again.

If yes, it's a problem of a kernel tristate config that doesn't have
the own module but referred only for constructing a probe table in
snd-intel-dspcfg. This is not really a fault of localmodconfig, but a
long-standing design problem. (I'm not sure why this surfaced
suddenly, though.) There are a few options to address it, and we have
to evaluate / decide what to do.

Takashi