Comment 69 for bug 381297

I had this same problem as this on my new Karmic setup
with the same VIA VT1708B on a Asus M2N68 mainboard with
AMD 64-bit cpu. This was a new Karmic install not an upgrade.

My first big (very big) mistake was trying to use a front
panel AC'97 connector that came with my mini-tower.
Changing to a HD Audio connector fixed that so that I could
see that the headphone was dectected using a:
> sudo ./hda-verb /dev/snd/hwC0D0 0x1d 0xf09 0
command showed:
> value = 0x80000000

Next I played with alsamixer and when the Independ column
is set to OFF then the front headphone jack starts to work.
The column is off to the right on the alsamixer display.

But using GNOME ALSA Mixer and changing the Independent HP
check box has no affect.