Ubuntu 14.04, Intel Chromebook, no sound

Solution 1:

Hope this helps other Linux users on their Chromebooks with the BayTrail hardware.

I bought a new FHD Toshiba Chromebook, installed Mint 17.3 Xfce4 on it straight away (modified the BIOS & conductive sticker).

Everything rocked except for the sound.... my symptom was that I only had the HDMI outputs, no speakers, no analog.

To fix this I did the following:

1. Update the kernel version from 3. something to 4.2.0-23 by using the update manager. (start the gui version of the update manager, click View > Linux Kernels, click at least the 4.2.0-23 version)

2. Update / install the linux-firmware package:

   sudo apt-get install linux-firmware
   

3. Download this Intel blob (click the link to download)

   https://kernel.googlesource.com/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/firmware/linux-firmware/+/refs/heads/master/intel/fw_sst_0f28.bin-48kHz_i2s_master

   Store it here:

   /lib/firmware/intel 
   

4. Download the modified sound config file (asound.state) from https://gist.github.com/n1trux/3751a87f374a8af5f611 Open a terminal window and type

   sudo alsa force-unload 
   

   This temporarily kills the audio services.

   Replace the system’s sound config file with the downloaded version:

   sudo cp ~/Downloads/asound.state /var/lib/alsa
   

5. Reboot, open pavucontrol and unmute your analog speakers, also perhaps check alsamixer: speaker should be enabled or allowed to be enabled.

Solution 2:

I had the similar problem recently after updating my Toshiba chromebook which runs Ubuntu 14.10 using crouton. The sound stopped working (although it did detect an output device "cras"). An update to crouton (instructions here) solved the issue for me.