Hi,

Running Slack 12.2. I'm getting all sorts of nasty noises out of my speakers. When I fire up alsamixer I see that 'mic' and 'mic boost' are both unmuted.
I mute them and all is well, then 'alsactl store' to save it. But on restart the 'mic' is back to unmuted. What do I need to do to get the change to stick?
BTW, I've tried the changes to alsamixer and alsactl as root, as user, from Konsole, from command line before startx, after shutting down X -- every combination and nothing works.

CD into your /etc/init.d directory and look to see if you have a file called alsasound. If you do, look over it and see if any default values are in there.

Also, I know KMix can restore values on boot. Not sure if you have it or not installed... If you do, I advise to see if the "Restore volumes on login" option is unchecked. Let me know if this helps, thanks!

Hi corp769,

Nope, no such file, but I did find /etc/rc.d/rc.alsa, and when I clicked on it, the problem vanished. It looks like the right sort of file, and is says the right sort of things. Perhaps if I could get it to execute on startup?

What do you mean when you clicked on it?

---------- Post added 02-23-11 at 08:42 PM ----------

And post the contents of that file if you could....

Well, it's a script file, so a double click executes it, correct? I have thunar set to 'single click executes' but I think I should have said 'double click' just to be clear.

Oh ok, I see. Could you post the contents of /etc/rc.d/rc.alsa?

Ok, here it is:


#!/bin/sh
# Load the mixer settings and OSS compatibility for ALSA.
# (the Advanced Linux Sound Architecture)

# A function to load the ALSA mixer settings:
load_alsa_mixer() {
if [ -r /etc/asound.state ]; then
echo "Loading ALSA mixer settings: /usr/sbin/alsactl restore"
/usr/sbin/alsactl restore
else
# It's possible a user might not want to set a default sound state.
# In that case, do this: touch /etc/no.asound.state
if [ ! -r /etc/no.asound.state ]; then
echo "Setting default ALSA mixer settings."
# set default mixer volumes for ALSA
# Taken from the alsaconfig script.
amixer -s -q <<EOF
set Master 75% unmute
set Master -12dB
set 'Master Mono' 75% unmute
set 'Master Mono' -12dB
set Front 75% unmute
set Front -12dB
set PCM 90% unmute
set PCM 0dB
mixer Synth 90% unmute
mixer Synth 0dB
mixer CD 90% unmute
mixer CD 0dB
# mute mic
set Mic 0% mute
# ESS 1969 chipset has 2 PCM channels
set PCM,1 90% unmute
set PCM,1 0dB
# Trident/YMFPCI/emu10k1
set Wave 100% unmute
set Music 100% unmute
set AC97 100% unmute
# CS4237B chipset:
set 'Master Digital' 75% unmute
# Envy24 chips with analog outs
set DAC 90% unmute
set DAC -12dB
set DAC,0 90% unmute
set DAC,0 -12dB
set DAC,1 90% unmute
set DAC,1 -12dB
# some notebooks use headphone instead of master
set Headphone 75% unmute
set Headphone -12dB
set Playback 100% unmute
# turn off digital switches
set "SB Live Analog/Digital Output Jack" off
set "Audigy Analog/Digital Output Jack" off
EOF
echo "Storing default ALSA mixer settings: /usr/sbin/alsactl store"
/usr/sbin/alsactl store
fi
fi
}

# A function to load the ALSA OSS compat modules:
load_alsa_oss_modules() {
if ! cat /proc/modules | tr _ - | grep -wq snd-pcm-oss ; then
echo "Loading OSS compatibility modules for ALSA."
modprobe snd-pcm-oss
modprobe snd-seq-oss
modprobe snd-mixer-oss
fi
}

# If hotplug or something else has loaded the ALSA modules, then
# simply load the mixer settings and make sure the OSS compat
# modules are loaded:
if [ -d /proc/asound ]; then
load_alsa_oss_modules
load_alsa_mixer
else
# If there are ALSA modules defined in /etc/modprobe.conf, but
# ALSA is not yet loaded, then load the modules now:
DRIVERS=$(modprobe -c | grep -E "^[[:space:]]*alias[[:space:]]+snd-card-[[:digit:]]" | tr -s "[[:blank:]]" " " | cut -d " " -f 3)
if [ ! "$DRIVERS" = "" ]; then
echo "Loading ALSA kernel modules."
for module in $DRIVERS; do
modprobe $module
done
fi
# If ALSA is now up, then load the mixer settings and OSS modules:
if [ -d /proc/asound ]; then
load_alsa_oss_modules
load_alsa_mixer
fi
fi

Tell me if either of these exists:

/etc/asound.state
/etc/no.asound.state

I've got the same problem with alsactl store 0 not causing the settings to be preserved after reboot. Before I started working on this, neither of the state files existed. I did a touch /etc/no.asound.state as suggested in rc.alsa, but it didn't help. I also note that the file /var/lib/alsa/asound.state, mentioned in the alsactl manpage, was modified during the shutdown.

I think you should run alsactl store as root.

If you try to run alsactl not as root, permission will be denied. So running it as root is the only way to run it at all.

Interesting -- in my system, the file /etc/rc.d/rc.alsa doesn't exist at all. In fact,/etc/rc.d doesn't exist -- all the agents are in directories /etc/rc.?.I've been trying to figure out the logic of the shutdown processing for alsa, but so far haven't been able to decode it. I haven't found any calls in those directories for alsa stuff. I did discover that there are indirect calls on alsa-utils stop, which doesn't change the alsamixer settings. I'm running Kubuntu 10.10 Maverick with KDE 4.6.1 and kernel 2.6.35-28.