Thinkpad mute button muted sound, permanently :-(
 

Hi,

yesterday evening I pushed the mute button of my Thinkpad x230, with openSuse Leap
now the sound is muted and does not come back, reboot let the mute button light, so it knows it is muted, but I can not unmute the system anymore

this is a strange problem, considering the fact that I also have a Thinkpad T420s with Slackware 14.1
and some time ago I pressed the mute button of the microphone, and now the mic does not work anymore,
since the light button on the mic button does not work anymore I thought it is possible dead,
but the experiance on the second system lets me think that there is something going on.

I know from a t430s with windows that after the update windows 8 to 10 the sound system did also not work on windows 10
some FN key combo (forgotten which) brought up a small extra GUI I never seen before where the sound/mic could be turned on again.

so what's the speciality with these mute keys, and how to re enable my sound on my Linux installations?

Yes now you get to get all GNU/Linuxy with the command line :D

what sound syetem you using?

for alsamixer try

or type in the commandline and it works off arrow keys, if I remember right - sets vol and mute and unmute -



how tos on setting and trouble shooting sound alsamixer

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php...roubleshooting

http://slopjong.de/2011/08/20/unmute...he-alsa-utils/

http://www.troubleshooters.com/linux...leshooting.htm

PulseAudio

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/PulseAudio

And, what desktop; KDE, GNOME &c?

My T420 switches the sound of when I unplug headphones in Debian\KDE so I have to open "audio setup" and select "audio hardware setup" then for "connector" select "speakers" ...

There are thinkpad drivers for that as well, here I search thinkpad in my package manager and get a few...

desktop is xfce on openSues Leap and KDE on Slackware

yesterday evening I fixed the openSuse Leap,
http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Mute_button

than I could get back my sound via raise the head phone volume, even if no headphone was attached, just the notbook speakers, so possible there is an other problem no but will see.


I will possible find a solution for the t420s /Slackware KDE here
http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Microphone_Mute_Button


@BW-userx thanks for the links,

@jamison20000e the kernel module is used, but I will see what else is available


ranting:
and I find this a very frustration experience, since this is a new problem on old(er) hardware
luckily that happen at home and not at a meeting in front of others, otherwise it would be again Linux hobbyists nothing works,
but these are the moments that make me think about how I invest my time ... I want to develop, not solving such stupid hardware problems.
You could say that it's not exotic hardware if it's a thinkpad and Linux should just work, as it was ....

Hi,

I have the same problem. I recently purchased an old x230 Lenovo. I just installed debian 8.5.0 non-free with XFCE desktop environment.

Sound was working, then I pressed mute, it mutes, i press again, it never comes back. I opened the audio mixer, disabled auto-mute, checked everything that common sense would suggest me to try.

Then I read somewhere someone suggested to install pavucontrol, which i did. In pavucontrol, I can see activity in the sound card. Also, there is a mute icon that is highlithed, and when I click on it, sound comes back!

Which isn't really practical...

To resume :

I press the mute button on my keyboard,

Pressing the physical mute or +/- buttons will display a notification that it works (unmute logo, sound increasing/decreasing) but in reality no sound is heard.

The only way to get the sound back is to open pavucontrol and click on the unmute icon.

Any idea on how to fix that?

thanks

I found a solution :)

I was reading this https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php...d:_Mute_button and this https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/PulseAudio

For those in the same case :

From the first link,

and from the second link,

To do so, click ADD, type the command 'pactl set-sink-mute 0 toggle', press OK, and press the Mute button on your keyboard.

Reboot, it should work! Mine works like a charm!

Cheers

if you're using PaulseAudio you can google arch wiki or a simular page on how to reset and or unmute it via command line then just write a script and set it up to run every time you boot up or log into your session. that way you'll have a just incase senerio making sure that your sound is not muted when you log in.

2nd:

I'm usinf XFCE4 too, and have the palseAudio plugin vol control on my status bar that has a check box mute option, makes it simple to unmute it .. then the fall back is the pavucontrol which coms in nice if your watching more then one movie , you tube video at the same time. you can open it up and lower or mute each one sepertly.