[Solved] Have to turn up my speakers with alsamixer at each boot

Netrunner Rolling Rolling 2014.04
1

So just a quick rundown -

Fresh install within the past 72 hours.

Everything worked fine when I first installed, and after updating everything.

But eventually I plugged in headphones (old-school not usb) and found they didn’t work.

There’s another thread here that solved that problem for me, it was a quick easy fix.

After that, everything was working fine for awhile.

Suddenly in the past 24 hours - I have no audio when I boot, out of speakers or out of headphones. If I use my hardware volume keys, the OSD comes up and looks like it’s adjusting audio, but nothing actually happens.

If I then start alsamixer in a terminal, I can select my speakers (which are always at 0) and turn them all the way up there. After I do that, I can use my volume keys or kmix with no problem, as you’d expect.

Even though I don’t think I did anything that should have made a difference, I did try a “sudo alsactl store” after making the change, but it is still reset to 0 after each reboot.

Attached is some info that I’ve seen asked for in similar threads (audio section of inxi -F), and also a screenshot of alsamixer as it looks before I adjust it, and after selecting my soundcard.

Any help is appreciated!

Audio: Card-1 NVIDIA GF106 High Definition Audio Controller driver: snd_hda_intel Card-2 Intel 6 Series/C200 Series Family High Definition Audio Controller driver: snd_hda_intel Sound: Advanced Linux Sound Architecture v: k3.14.15-1-MANJARO

Edit: Solution here:

[quote]Still no idea how I created the problem in the first place, but -

First I renamed ~/.pulse-cookie

That didn’t work by itself, but I noticed that it still has not been recreated, so it still may have been a necessary step.

Then I renamed ~/.config/pulse/ and that did the trick![/quote]

2

After the change in alsamixer you can force to save the configuratio. With the command

sudo alsactl store

Does this help even after a reboot ?

3

Go to the mixer icon on the tray, right click on it then on the wheal in the bottom corner, check to see if these settings are right.
[attachment=383]
[attachment=382]

4

Good suggestions, but sadly no success… :frowning:

5

Check your KDE audio setup first and make sure the right card and output is selected.

[attachment=385]

and here:

[attachment=386]

If that doesn’t work then try using pavcontrol to fix this. it sound like pulse is defaulting to the Nvidia HDMI audio. and muting the laptop sound.
sudo pacman -S pavcontrol

6

^^ Those look OK to me and in any case as soon asI turn up the speaker channel with alsamixer, everything works anyhow (including controlling the volume with kmix and/or hardware volume keys).

BUT, I did find a clue.

I have a secondary user that I never use - I usually always create one so that I can refer to a default setup if for whatever reason I want to undo anything I’ve done.

When I log on to that user after a fresh reboot, sound works there.

So now I think I’m on a hunt to figure out what all config files are holding my per user pulse/alsa/etc settings.

If you have any advice there to save me a bit of googling, I’d certainly appreciate it. In any case if I get it fixed I will report back here… :slight_smile:

7

Spontaneously I would say ~/.pulse and ~/.pulse-cookie are the folders you might want to try deleting or renaming.

8

Woohoo, all solved.

Still no idea how I created the problem in the first place, but -

First I renamed ~/.pulse-cookie

That didn’t work by itself, but I noticed that it still has not been recreated, so it still may have been a necessary step.

Then I renamed ~/.config/pulse/ and that did the trick!

Thanks for all the help!