Hell Labs

Let’s hypothesize for a moment that you must make an old, binary-only Conexant HSF softmodem driver (that you, for some reason, can’t upgrade) peacefully coexist with a newer 2.6.22 kernel ALSA HDA driver. “Oh, what an embarrassing situation!” you might think — but I assure you, this can actually happen to some unfortunate souls among us. A workaround for this problem is twofold: first, you must graft the HSF appendages to your existing HDA driver (the HSF driver comes with its own HDA driver that potentially won’t have some features you need), and then resolve a recursion in module loading since 2.6.22 merged snd-hda-codec and snd-hda-intel in a single module and the binary-only culprit used to sit between the two.

So without further ado, here is what it takes to have this setup working:

1. Revert the hda-codec and hda-intel merge, to work around the HSF initialization recursion.
2. Apply Herton’s HSF patch against 2.6.22 so you can use the binary-only portion with the stock HDA driver from your kernel.

Generally speaking, binary-only modules can be a pain in the ass and this situation illustrates well how. Always verify driver availability before purchasing hardware, and that can save you some headaches.