Fixing audio on Asus strix scar 17 g733qs

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1

I’ve finally got my hands on this laptop. On Manjaro I could fix its audio problems following the guide here

However hdajackretask is a gui programs that apparently can apply overrides on poweron.

Since a long term system config on nixos must be done in the config.nix,how can I override pins as the guide suggest using nixos’ module system?

2

What files are modified by the program?

3

I think I have done it once.

First you should run hdajackretask in console.

nix run -f channel:nixos-20.09 alsaTools -c hdajackretask

Then config the card and choose install boot override which will fail and print something like this in console.

mv: cannot move '/tmp/hda-jack-retask-33OI20/hda-jack-retask.fw' to '/lib/firmware/hda-jack-retask.fw': No such file or directory

Just grab the temporary hda-jack-retask.fw and add this snippet into the configuration.nix (or hardware-configuration.nix).

hardware.firmware = [ ( pkgs.writeTextDir "/lib/firmware/hda-jack-retask.fw" ( builtins.readFile ./hda-jack-retask.fw ) ) ];

Only test I have done is running nixos-rebuild build and cheking that firmware/hda-jack-retask.fw is present in the result. But it should work.

4

So I’ve built the iso however when I try to run from it the grub menu appears but it freezes once I select one of the options and if I press any button I go back to the bios menu

5

I’m continuing this discussion here: Running nixos iso on asus rog stryx - #2 by nixinator

6

So I have put that line in my configuration.nix,however the audio is still broken. I know that that fix work on manjaro,however it does not fix it on Nixos.

7

The question is:why putting that file in /lib/firmware would work on Manjaro? What component is reading *.fw files here?

8

I’ve also tried

  systemd.services.asus-audio = {
    wantedBy = [ "multi-user.target" ];
    before = [ "multi-user.target" ];

    script = "cat ${./hda-jack-retask.fw } >/sys/class/sound/hwC2D0/reconfig";
    serviceConfig = {
      Type = "oneshot";
      Restart = "on-failure";
    };
  };

but,while the sservice result successful withsystemctl status it still does not fix the audio

9

Ok,I’ve fixed it with

  snd = "/sys/class/sound/hwC2D0";
in
{

  # hardware.firmware = [ ( pkgs.writeTextDir "/lib/firmware/hda-jack-retask.fw" ( builtins.readFile ./hda-jack-retask.fw ) ) ];
  systemd.services.asus-audio = {
    wantedBy = [ "multi-user.target" ];
    before = [ "multi-user.target" ];

    script = ''
      (
        echo 0x14 0x90170152
        echo 0x19 0x03a19020
        echo 0x1e 0x90170151
      )>${snd}/user_pin_configs
      echo 1 > ${snd}/reconfig
    '';
    serviceConfig = {
      Type = "oneshot";
      Restart = "on-failure";
    };
  };
}

I’ll make a pr to nixos-hardware later

10

Ahh, I found out that hdajackretask needs another step: adding option for snd-hda-intel driver.

boot.extraModprobeConfig = ''
  options snd-hda-intel patch=hda-jack-retask.fw
'';

It looks familiar for me and I think a had used it too.

Inspired by Analog surround sound setup on Linux with a Realtek ALC898 sound card on the Clevo P751DM2-G · GitHub

11

Ok but my solution did not need to mess with modprobe.
I think later will write a module about rixing audio pins.