This week I installed Slackware ARM aarch64 on my Raspberry Pi 5 with Sarpi's installer. There seems to be no audio available:

"aplay -l" gives no soundcards found.

Raspberry Pi OS Bookworm shows soundcards and as far as I know Sarpi uses the same kernel.

How to obtain a working audio?

You might be on your own for the moment as Sarpi is Exaga's bag of tricks, rpi5 is newest and a little outside the scope kernel wise with respect to Slackware ARM aarch64.

Ensure you've enabled audio in the /boot/config.txt file, the audio is sent over hdmi along with the video signal, but unless it's enabled, won't work. I just streamed a video on youtube without issue on mine using the sarpi kernel.

Also, sarpi kernels are built from the rpi kernel fork sources, but they are not re-packaged Raspberry Pi OS kernels. The configuration, however, may be very similar, I've never compared them personally.

I suspect (not that I know, because I don't use audio on command line) that it'll be an EDID thing/setting in config.txt to enable it. I'll also guess that plugging in some USB headphones or an audio adapter should work 'as is'.


Do you think I'm that insane to build kernels from scratch? No, no, no. I use a bcm*_defconfig and save myself tonnes of time and effort as a result.

But yes you're right, they are very close in terms of overall configuration.

1 members found this post helpful.

The file config.txt comes with dtparam=audio=on. The used Sarpi kernel is from 6th of March 2024. It surprises me you have audio. Pavucontrol shows for output devices only output for virtual output devices.

I plugged in a webcam with microphone to test. It is detected by Pavucontrol and tapping on the webcam shows responses. I also expect an USB audio adapter should work, but I prefer sound via HDMI.

1 members found this post helpful.

I'm actually not on the latest kernel, mostly because I'm lazy and busy with other things, but also because it's a manual procedure (and I did say I'm lazy), but I'm on 6.6.18. I'll have to process some updates and see if things have changed. Things can break, and since they don't officially ship 6.6 in their official rpi OS, it could potentially be broken. I'll report back once I've had time to test with more details.

2 members found this post helpful.

I upgraded to 6.6.20 and really the entire release seems broken. No wifi, so I couldn't get to youtube to play sound and I had no network to download any mp3 from another machine to check either, and moving files with usb is _effort_ so I didn't check anymore. If I can't get online, I consider a thing broken. I downgraded back to 6.6.18 for the interim. It appears 6.6.20 may have some significant issues. I uploaded the 6.6.18 sarpi rpi5 files I have http://slackware.lngn.net/pub/sarpi/ to offer my aid in your plight as well. Maybe this will be addressed in the next kernel update, but it's always good to keep a backup around

1 members found this post helpful.

I built and tested kernel 6.6.21 yesterday and it seems fine. Then again, I've been running 6.6.20 for a week or so without any networking problems at all. Something, somewhere, isn't right that's for sure. Although, nothing has changed that I am aware of which would cause issues like these. Very strange indeed.

[EDIT] thanks to jloco, it lead me to realise there's been a wireless and bluetooth firmware update on 04 March 2024. So I'll rebuild the 6.6.21 batches using the updated sources and, if testing is successful, upload them later today.

1 members found this post helpful.

I compiled kernel 6.1.y (latest is 6.1.77) and installed it. This resulted in working audio, but this also introduced a non-starting X-server.
Using rpi-update, which provides a 6.6.21 kernel, gave the same result.
After that I installed jloco's 6.6.18 kernel. Audio works fine, but the X-server won't start.

In Xorg.0.log I found:

Fatal server error:
[ 59.697] (EE) Cannot run in framebuffer mode. Please specify busIDs for all framebuffer devices

You need to create the file and inside put:
Matter of fact, x11 shouldn't of worked at all before without that file...

1 members found this post helpful.

Thanks jloco. Your code resulted in a running X-server!

Thereafter I started from scratch by:
Using Sarpi's installer from 12032024, which resulted in a kernel 6.6.21 with running X-server, but no audio.
Then I tried rpi-update, which failed. After that I compiled the latest 6.6.y kernel (6.6.21) and installed it.
Audio is fine and after adding /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/99-vc4.conf the X-server runs smoothly.

1 members found this post helpful.

On the RPi 4 (not 5) you don't need an Xorg config file, because the v3d driver is automatically detected when running both the mainline and RPi Kernel fork. This is why we don't ship one.

Yes, but from what I know of the rpi5, and its hardware, this is needed specifically for the device. Of course, I wouldn't expect it to exist within Slackware unless it were touting to support the rpi5 in an official stance either. I'd informed Exaga to include it in one of his packages a while ago and he hadn't done so yet, so the best I can do is share the info in a forum for others to happen upon

Thanks, I will drop it into the x11-skel package. It won't get installed under SARPi since it lacks the slk-hwm-discover tool, but it'll live within /usr/share/x11-skel/platform/aarch64/bcm2712/xorg.conf.rpi5