Arch Linux

zmyx

Member

Registered: 2009-11-05

Posts: 13

Website

[SOLVED] unknown hardware Thinkpad EC

After the last pacman update I got this error at boot:

::Restoring ALSA levels                                               [BUSY]
No state is present for card ThinkPad EC
Unknown hardware "ThinkPad EC" "ThinkPad EC 1UHWB2WW-1.62" "" "" ""
Hardware is initialized using a guess method
No state is preset for card ThinkPadEC
                                                                      [FAIL]

I'm using Thinkpad X40 and this is the first time I get this error message. The firmware for the embedded controller is the latest version as well as the bios. It is not a serious problem and I can use the laptop quite fine but I just want to know if there is a way to solve it.

Any ideas?

Last edited by zmyx (2010-04-12 07:27:58)

zmyx

Member

Registered: 2009-11-05

Posts: 13

Website

Re: [SOLVED] unknown hardware Thinkpad EC

I found the answer in archwiki. It's actually ALSA related and I should have looked more into it before.

The problem is solved by doing

 alsactl store

japtar10101

Member

Registered: 2009-08-08

Posts: 57

Re: [SOLVED] unknown hardware Thinkpad EC

Incidentally, I have a similar problem on a ThinkPad T60, and worse, it doesn't mute the annoying system beep even when I tell it to on the alsamixer.  Any ideas?

chpln

Member

From: Australia

Registered: 2009-09-17

Posts: 361

Re: [SOLVED] unknown hardware Thinkpad EC

As far as I know the system beep is unrelated to alsa, though it can still be disabled.

/etc/rc.conf

MODULES=(... !pcspkr ...)

This alone will not prevent beeping during suspend / resume.  To prevent this the hardware mixer can be temporarily muted:

/etc/modprobe.d/modprobe.conf (required for linux-2.6.33, but not 2.6.32):

options thinkpad_acpi volume_control=1

/etc/pm/sleep.d/50-beep.sh (assuming use of pm-utils for suspend / resume).

#!/bin/bash
case $1 in
    thaw|resume)
        echo unmute > /proc/acpi/ibm/volume;;
    hibernate|suspend)
        echo mute > /proc/acpi/ibm/volume;
        sleep 0.5;;
esac

Note the `unmute' keyword may or may not be supported under 2.6.32.  If not an alternative is to use the keyword to increase volume - see /proc/acpi/ibm/volume for the exact keyword required.

Last edited by chpln (2010-04-13 10:32:07)