Sound disappeared after keyboard mishap- XFCE 4.10

aquaboot · 11-07-2015, 09:59 PM

This has happened before to me. On my keyboard, there are three icon keys: sound up, sound down and mute. I touched one of the keys by accident and the sound (YouTube) went off. I thought that I may have hit mute so I hit mute button and it then showed muted- I hadn't hit it in the first place. I used sound up and down (which showed volume bar go up and down) and still no sound even when unmuted. I used xfce4-mixer and raised master volume to max. Still nothing. I'm clueless at this point and have included a screenshot of my xfce4-mixer settings. I'm dual booting with Linux Mint and the sound works fine, so its not a hardware issue.

Thanks,

ab

rokytnji · 11-07-2015, 10:40 PM

Maybe look in

Code:

cat .bash_history

in case that keystroke got logged in there? Just a guess though.

You left out the part of what xfce 4.10 is running on and other details.

Like in my laptop. I have $ /home/username/.icewm/keys

You should have something similar for XFCE in a hidden folder named /home/username/.xfce

ondoho · 11-08-2015, 03:47 AM

you have to find out if some action is assigned to the offending key.

you can find out which key it is with

Code:

xev

then press the key.

xfce has a hotkey daemon, it probably goes by a different name, but it should show up in the settings dialog. try to find the key there.
if not found, you can probably mask it by making it execute "true".

aquaboot · 11-08-2015, 05:50 PM

Thanks for the responses. I've discovered after another install that sound works until I hit the mute key on the keyboard. After that, everything is hosed- even with master volume unmuted and placed at high volume; no recovery so far. I'll look into xev.

debianxfce · 11-12-2015, 04:06 AM

Multimedia keyboard mute button works with debian testing xfce updated to latest packages and with my custom kernel 4.3.0 where audio is enabled for intel and realtek chipsets, because motherboard has realtek audio.

Hdmi audio can mute analog audio. Disable pulseaudio and set output to alsa hadrware with xfce-mixer that is deprecated in the current version of xfce. It switched to pulseaudio that causes problems in games and bluetooth file transfer.
To stop its respawning habit, open /etc/pulse/client.conf, change autospawn = yes to autospawn = no, and set daemon-binary to /bin/true. Make sure these lines are uncommented, like this:

autospawn = no
daemon-binary = /bin/true

QasMixer is another alsa mixer.

Debian stable has almost 400 bugs and can not have latest software from testing, sid and experimental. Stable will break if you install from these, testing will not. In experimental you have latest iceweasel and kernel , for example.

ondoho · 11-13-2015, 02:02 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by aquaboot

Thanks for the responses. I've discovered after another install that sound works until I hit the mute key on the keyboard. After that, everything is hosed- even with master volume unmuted and placed at high volume; no recovery so far. I'll look into xev.

ok, so when sound is "hosed", how far do you have to go to fix it? reboot? log out/in?
in any case, find the keycode for the offending key with "xev".
example from my keyboard:

Code:

KeyPress event, serial 48, synthetic NO, window 0x1800001,
    root 0x294, subw 0x0, time 4045269, (134,221), root:(135,611),
    state 0x0, keycode 110 (keysym 0xff50, Home), same_screen YES,
    XLookupString gives 0 bytes: 
    XmbLookupString gives 0 bytes: 
    XFilterEvent returns: False

KeyRelease event, serial 48, synthetic NO, window 0x1800001,
    root 0x294, subw 0x0, time 4045365, (134,221), root:(135,611),
    state 0x0, keycode 110 (keysym 0xff50, Home), same_screen YES,
    XLookupString gives 0 bytes: 
    XFilterEvent returns: False

this is for the "Home" key.
my keyboard doesn't have multimedia keys.
in your case, something like "Xf86Mute" should show up.
make note of this keycode, open xfce's hotkey manager, and tell it to execute "/bin/true" on pressing this key.
this should mask the offending key by doing nothing when it's pressed.

consider this troubleshooting & a sledgehammer workaround.
but, if it works, you know where the problem is and can start looking for a real solution.