Re: [alsa-devel] [PATCH v4 3/3] ALSA: hda: Disabled unused audio controller for Dell platforms with Switchable Graphics

From: Lukas Wunner <lukas@wunner.de>
To: Kai Heng Feng <kai.heng.feng@canonical.com>
Cc: "Pali Rohár" <pali.rohar@gmail.com>,
	"Takashi Iwai" <tiwai@suse.de>,
	mjg59@srcf.ucam.org, dvhart@infradead.org, andy@infradead.org,
	"Mario Limonciello" <mario.limonciello@dell.com>,
	alsa-devel@alsa-project.org,
	"Linux Kernel Mailing List" <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>,
	platform-driver-x86@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [alsa-devel] [PATCH v4 3/3] ALSA: hda: Disabled unused audio controller for Dell platforms with Switchable Graphics
Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2018 23:13:47 +0200	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20180424211347.GA18258@wunner.de> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <FF30493D-012C-41E8-B379-85138E1EDE05@canonical.com>

On Mon, Apr 23, 2018 at 04:18:35PM +0800, Kai Heng Feng wrote:
> >On Apr 23, 2018, at 4:08 PM, Pali RohÃ¡r <pali.rohar@gmail.com> wrote:
> >On Monday 23 April 2018 16:04:55 Kai Heng Feng wrote:
> >>>On Apr 20, 2018, at 8:10 PM, Takashi Iwai <tiwai@suse.de> wrote:
> >>>On Fri, 20 Apr 2018 11:44:32 +0200, Kai-Heng Feng wrote:
> >>>>Now it's a typical discrete-only system. HDMI audio comes from AMD audio
> >>>>controller, others from Intel audio controller.
> >>>>
> >>>>When SG is enabled, the unused AMD audio contoller still exposes its
> >>>>sysfs, so userspace still opens the control file and stream. If
> >>>>userspace tries to output sound through the stream, it hangs the system.
> >>>
> >>>Hm, could you give more information about how it hangs?
> >>
> >>Well, I should say "it hangs the userspace process" instead.
> >>
> >>$ speaker-test -t wav -c 2 -D hw:CARD=HDMI,DEV=3
> >>...and it just stopped. Can't Ctrl+C to break it.
> >
> >So userspace process cannot be killed at all? Then it is different bug
> >in kernel and disabling pci device is just a workaround. Not a real fix.
> >
> >I would propose to find out what happen and why it cannot be killed
> >(probably it stuck somewhere in kernel) and fix it properly.
> 
> That's because the audio device got runtime suspended by the graphics.
> 
> In this case, if we really want to use the the discrete audio, then we also
> need to wake up the graphics.
> The discrete audio is totally useless when SG is enabled, so my approach is
> just to disable it.

I don't quite follow, that should be fixed by commit 07f4f97d7b4b
("vga_switcheroo: Use device link for HDA controller") which landed
in v4.17-rc1.

My understanding was that with SG enabled, the external DP/HDMI ports
are muxed to the Intel GPU, so audio can only be streamed to external
displays by the Intel HDA, not by the HDA integrated into the discrete
AMD/Nvidia GPU.  Audio streamed to the latter would essentially end up
in a blackhole.  And preventing the user from seeing such useless audio
devices was the sole purpose of this commit.  Am I missing something?

Thanks,

Lukas