GDM and/or PulseAudio mute my sound
 

Working from the command line in a text-only console using espeakup, all
is well, and sound works as it should. However, starting GDM mutes my
sound card. If I go back to the text console and run


sudo systemctl start alsa-restore

Again, all is well in the text console until I login with GDM. I am
expecting to hear Orca speaking at this point, but I hear nothing. In
order to get Orca to speak, I must run gnome-terminal from within GNOME
and then do


sudo systemctl start alsa-restore

again. Once I do this, I have sound until I shutdown the computer. I
have tried xdm and lxdm also, and while they themselves don't cause me
to lose sound at the text console, I am for some reason unable to login
and use GNOME from either of these display managers. I also tried
commenting out


load-module module-device-restore

in /etc/pulse/default.pa, as was a possible work-around in a much older
version of PulseAudio that mentioned /etc/pa.conf, which I translated to
/etc/pulse/default.pa since there is no /etc/pa.conf, but this also
doesn't solve my problem. I should note that although I am using systemd
commands to restore sound, this problem is not related to systemd, as I
was experiencing the same issue before I migrated to full systemd yesterday.


I am currently running Arch on a USB flash drive connected to a Dell
Optiplex from about 2003 or 2004, but I can't find the exact model, as
lshw is only giving me Dell Computer Corporation as the vendor name with
no model number, and it doesn't even say Optiplex anywhere, although I
remember reading it somewhere a couple of years ago. The computer was
given to my family several years ago, but it's basically been a spare
box until recently when my newer and better designed box passed away due
to human error. This is why I unfortunately don't have the full
information about this machine. The sound card is listed by lspci as


00:1f.5 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM
(ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) AC'97 Audio Controller (rev 01)


and uses the snd_intel8x0 kernel module. I am currently running
linux-lts 3.0.40-1, pulseaudio 2.1-1, pulseaudio-alsa 2-1, alsa-utils
1.0.25-3 and gdm 3.4.1-2. I would appreciate any help anyone can
provide, and will be happy to answer any questions I may have missed here.

~Kyle

GDM and/or PulseAudio mute my sound
 

According to Rodrigo Rivas:
Have you tried running "alsamixer -D hw" and see if there are any
muted channels in your hardware?


Master is at 87% normally. Once GDM runs, it zeros out and mutes. Also,
once pulseaudio starts, the Master channel zeros out and mutes.


Also, once I had a similar problem and solved it by simply deleting the
files at ~/.pulse/*.tdb


Unfortunately this is also not working. I even tried deleting the entire
~/.pulse directory with no luck. Thanks for the help.

~Kyle

GDM and/or PulseAudio mute my sound
 

On Thu, Aug 16, 2012 at 9:28 PM, Kyle <kyle@gmx.ca> wrote:

> Working from the command line in a text-only console using espeakup, all
> is well, and sound works as it should. However, starting GDM mutes my sound
> card. If I go back to the text console and run
>
> sudo systemctl start alsa-restore
>
> Again, all is well in the text console until I login with GDM. I am
> expecting to hear Orca speaking at this point, but I hear nothing. In order
> to get Orca to speak, I must run gnome-terminal from within GNOME and then
> do
>
> sudo systemctl start alsa-restore
>
> again. Once I do this, I have sound until I shutdown the computer. I have
> tried xdm and lxdm also, and while they themselves don't cause me to lose
> sound at the text console, I am for some reason unable to login and use
> GNOME from either of these display managers. I also tried commenting out
>
> load-module module-device-restore
>
> in /etc/pulse/default.pa, as was a possible work-around in a much older
> version of PulseAudio that mentioned /etc/pa.conf, which I translated to
> /etc/pulse/default.pa since there is no /etc/pa.conf, but this also
> doesn't solve my problem. I should note that although I am using systemd
> commands to restore sound, this problem is not related to systemd, as I was
> experiencing the same issue before I migrated to full systemd yesterday.
>
> I am currently running Arch on a USB flash drive connected to a Dell
> Optiplex from about 2003 or 2004, but I can't find the exact model, as lshw
> is only giving me Dell Computer Corporation as the vendor name with no
> model number, and it doesn't even say Optiplex anywhere, although I
> remember reading it somewhere a couple of years ago. The computer was given
> to my family several years ago, but it's basically been a spare box until
> recently when my newer and better designed box passed away due to human
> error. This is why I unfortunately don't have the full information about
> this machine. The sound card is listed by lspci as
>
> 00:1f.5 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM
> (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) AC'97 Audio Controller (rev 01)
>
> and uses the snd_intel8x0 kernel module. I am currently running linux-lts
> 3.0.40-1, pulseaudio 2.1-1, pulseaudio-alsa 2-1, alsa-utils 1.0.25-3 and
> gdm 3.4.1-2. I would appreciate any help anyone can provide, and will be
> happy to answer any questions I may have missed here.
> ~Kyle
>

Have you tried running "alsamixer -D hw" and see if there are any muted
channels in your hardware?

Also, once I had a similar problem and solved it by simply deleting the
files at ~/.pulse/*.tdb

HTH
--
Rodrigo

GDM and/or PulseAudio mute my sound
 

On Fri, Aug 17, 2012 at 12:46 AM, Kyle <kyle@gmx.ca> wrote:

> According to Rodrigo Rivas:
>
> Have you tried running "alsamixer -D hw" and see if there are any muted
>> channels in your hardware?
>>
>
> Master is at 87% normally. Once GDM runs, it zeros out and mutes. Also,
> once pulseaudio starts, the Master channel zeros out and mutes.
>
>
> Also, once I had a similar problem and solved it by simply deleting the
> files at ~/.pulse/*.tdb
>
> Unfortunately this is also not working. I even tried deleting the entire
> ~/.pulse directory with no luck. Thanks for the help.
> ~Kyle
>

One last idea. Maybe the gnome-settings-daemon is playing dumb with your
sound. I think you can disable the sound plugin of g-s-d using dconf
(org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.sound.active).

I don't know if that will affect also to the GDM greeter, but it is worth
trying it.

As a last resort you could also try renaming
"/usr/lib/gnome-settings-daemon-3.0/libsound.so" and see what happens.
--
Rodrigo

GDM and/or PulseAudio mute my sound
 

According to Rodrigo Rivas:

One last idea. Maybe the gnome-settings-daemon is playing dumb with your
sound. I think you can disable the sound plugin of g-s-d using dconf
(org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.sound.active).



I tried

dconf write org/gnome/settings-daemon/plugins/sound/active false


I don't know if that will affect also to the GDM greeter, but it is worth
trying it.

It had no effect, either in the greeter or in GNOME itself.


As a last resort you could also try renaming
"/usr/lib/gnome-settings-daemon-3.0/libsound.so" and see what happens.



Strangely, this also has no effect at all. Once GDM starts, the master
volume is still zeroed out and muted. I say zeroed out and muted because
I must run alsamixer, turn up the master volume and then unmute it in
order to get the sound working again, although


sudo systemctl start alsa-restore

also does work, since the volume was previously saved using

sudo systemctl start alsa-store

while the volume was at the proper level. At this point, I am totally
stumped. The computer I had that died used a SoundBlaster Live Value,
and although the sound started out muted, restoring the alsa volumes
always worked as expected. However, on this machine with the Intel
onboard sound, nothing seems to keep the volumes from muting whenever
GNOMe and GDM start.

~Kyle

GDM and/or PulseAudio mute my sound
 

On Sat, Aug 18, 2012 at 4:20 AM, Kyle <kyle@gmx.ca> wrote:
> According to Rodrigo Rivas:
>
>> One last idea. Maybe the gnome-settings-daemon is playing dumb with your
>> sound. I think you can disable the sound plugin of g-s-d using dconf
>> (org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.sound.active).
>>
>
> I tried
>
> dconf write org/gnome/settings-daemon/plugins/sound/active false
>
>
>> I don't know if that will affect also to the GDM greeter, but it is worth
>> trying it.
>
> It had no effect, either in the greeter or in GNOME itself.
>
>
>> As a last resort you could also try renaming
>> "/usr/lib/gnome-settings-daemon-3.0/libsound.so" and see what happens.
>>
>
> Strangely, this also has no effect at all. Once GDM starts, the master
> volume is still zeroed out and muted. I say zeroed out and muted because I
> must run alsamixer, turn up the master volume and then unmute it in order to
> get the sound working again, although
>
> sudo systemctl start alsa-restore
>
> also does work, since the volume was previously saved using
>
> sudo systemctl start alsa-store
>
> while the volume was at the proper level. At this point, I am totally
> stumped. The computer I had that died used a SoundBlaster Live Value, and
> although the sound started out muted, restoring the alsa volumes always
> worked as expected. However, on this machine with the Intel onboard sound,
> nothing seems to keep the volumes from muting whenever GNOMe and GDM start.
> ~Kyle

Did you also do "systemctl enable alsa-store"? "enable" means it
should be set to "start" on boot.

Immediately after you have booted try "systemctl status alsa-store" -
it should show it as running. If not then try the "enable" command
above.

--
mike c

GDM and/or PulseAudio mute my sound
 

On Sat, Aug 18, 2012 at 8:45 AM, mike cloaked <mike.cloaked@gmail.com> wrote:

>> while the volume was at the proper level. At this point, I am totally
>> stumped. The computer I had that died used a SoundBlaster Live Value, and
>> although the sound started out muted, restoring the alsa volumes always
>> worked as expected. However, on this machine with the Intel onboard sound,
>> nothing seems to keep the volumes from muting whenever GNOMe and GDM start.
>> ~Kyle
>
> Did you also do "systemctl enable alsa-store"? "enable" means it
> should be set to "start" on boot.
>
> Immediately after you have booted try "systemctl status alsa-store" -
> it should show it as running. If not then try the "enable" command
> above.
>

Actually thinking about it whilst the "systemctl start alsa-store"
command should work to start the service if it is not running after
boot, you will likely need "systemctl enable alsa-store.service" to
start it at boot as the short form only works for starting and
stopping the service at present.

--
mike c

GDM and/or PulseAudio mute my sound
 

Finally able to return my attention to this problem.

alsa-store.service and alsa-restore.service are oneshot services with no
[Install] section. Therefore, they cannot be enabled and disabled using
systemctl. They do, however, appear to run as needed, probably as a
dependency when udev loads the modules for the sound device. I find that
the volumes are always saved at shutdown and restored at boot time, but
something in gdm or gnome-settings-daemon, or possibly even Pulse itself
is muting the volume, although it seems unlikely that Pulse is doing it,
because if I restore the master volume after gdm starts, either using
alsamixer or by explicitly running alsa-restore.service, logging into
GNOME once again mutes the master volume and sets it to 0. Apparently,
Google is not my friend this time, as I can find no information about
this problem, and I appear to be the only one experiencing it, and only
on this machine. Additionally, I resized the existing partition on this
machine's hard disk and installed Arch into the free space, just in case
something was behaving strangely because Arch was installed to a thumb
drive, but the problem persists. Any help with this unusual problem is
greatly appreciated.

~Kyle

GDM and/or PulseAudio mute my sound
 

According to Kyle:
Apparently, Google is not my friend this time, as I can find no
information about this problem, and I appear to be the only one
experiencing it, and only on this machine.



Correction: I actually did find [1], and that appears to be my exact
problem, but it is also unsolved. Please help. Thanks.


[1] https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=130201
~Kyle

GDM and/or PulseAudio mute my sound
 

According to Kyle:
> Apparently, Google is not my friend this time, as I can find no
> information about this problem, and I appear to be the only one
> experiencing it, and only on this machine.


Correction: I actually did find [1], and that appears to be my exact
problem, but it is also unsolved. Please help. Thanks.

[1] https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=130201
~Kyle


Hi Kyle,

I think I have also been having the same problems with pulseaudio on
Arch. Basically pulseaudio seems to
mute and zero the master channel on my sound card (its a VirtualBox
machine) whenever it starts.


I asked for help on the pulseaudio mailinglist back in June [1], but
nothing much came out of it.


I then gave up for a bit, but have been meaning to raise a bug on it.

So this weekend I did so [2,3].

[1]
http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/pulseaudio-discuss/2012-June/013710.html

[2] https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/31469
[3] https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=54673

Cheers,

Frank