Sound broken
 

Hello, I believe I messed up my sound settings.

When I log in to my account, there is no sound at all, although the login screen and my other test account do have sound.

Giving these commands fixes the problem for the current session:
pulseaudio --kill
pulseaudio --start

But the next session is broken again and I have to give the two commands again if I want sound.

My system uses Debian Squeese with gnome 2.

Hi:

I'm not the sound expert but it might just be that some of the things in your alsa mixer are muted-

Open the terminal and type:
The window will open and you'll see a black background with columns. At the bottom of each column you'll see the sound either muted or not muted (oo) this is not muted (mm) this is muted. Try muting and un-muting each and raise the volume up on each column.
http://linux.die.net/man/1/alsamixer
This is the video that I followed. After I closed the terminal I had sound.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWmXG-e6yzI

Hope this helps;)

Nope, sorry, I checked it, and nothing was muted.

I really wonder what the problem could be. As far as I can remember, this started after touching the gnome sound settings, maybe a bug in the config dialog?
Is there maybe a way to completely reset all sound settings to default?

This is my sound card: lspci | grep audio
00:1f.5 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corporation 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) AC'97 Audio Controller (rev 02)

Could it be a problem with the sound card, and that those two pulseaudio commands switch the sound from the hardware card to a virtual sound card?

Squeeze uses alsa by default. Why are you running pulseaudio?

Since you are running pulseaudio I suspect that it could be causing conflict with alsa.

Afterall Cascade said; "Squeeze uses alsa by default"

I'm a total sound noob. After the sound stopped working, I just tried different commands and these two turned the sound back on.

What is pulseaudio anyway? Does it play the same role as ALSA?

I noticed these two commands in the commands ran after login: "start-pulseaudio-kde" (I'm using gnome) and "start-pulseaudio-x11" (why start it twice?).

I'll throw them out and see what happens.

EDIT:
The "start-pulseaudio-x11" disappeared by itself, and throwing out the kde one didn't do anything.

Is pulseaudio supposed to be in /etc/init.d ?

PulseAudio is a sound system for POSIX OSes, meaning that it is a proxy for your sound applications.
http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/PulseAudio
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PulseAudio

I looked in /etc/initid and found my Alsa file so yes that would be the correct place for Pulseaudio if it's on your OS-

Do you now have sound?

No... still no sound, except once again of I run "pulseaudio --kill" and "pulseaudio --start"

A Ubuntu help page (Yes, I'm on Debian) suggested I should try this command to test the sound. It didn't work before the two commands, it did after, but maybe the terminal output is interesting?

werner@WernerPC:~$ aplay /usr/share/sounds/alsa/Front_Center.wav
ALSA lib pcm_dmix.c:1018:(snd_pcm_dmix_open) unable to open slave aplay: main:654: audio open error: Apparaat of hulpbron is bezig

Could anyone tell me, if thei're running Debian with Gnome (or something similar) which audio-related commands there are in the commands ran at login?

EDIT:
I Just noticed that my other test user has a completely different sound config dialog. I get some strange "Intel ICH5 mixer" while the test user gets the default gnome sound configuration screen.

Running this command will show which sound card you have:
Once you know the card # and manufacturer you can look for a driver for your sound card.
I'm starting to wonder that your card just might need a driver.

I'm not sure which command you would use for audio at login.

This is a Debian Wiki page for help with sound:
http://wiki.debian.org/SoundFAQ

Not a good idea to use ubuntu commands with debian. It worked, this time, though I have no idea why. Sometimes trying ubuntu commands with debian can break your system.

Start with the debian wiki-

http://wiki.debian.org/ALSA

Try chaging to root (su) then run this command-

alsactl init

werner291:

Cascade9 has always given me wise counsel so I would run what he recommends.
As root

"alsactl init" didn't fix the problem either. :(

Any ideas what those two commands "pulseaudio --kill" and "pulseaudio --start" might be doing? Could it be that the other user, who does have sound, uses some kind of virtual sound card and that my user is trying to use the hardware one? How do I check that?

It was only the "aplay" command that I tried from that page, and I wasn't logged in as root.

EDIT: I found the problem: My test user uses the onboard audio device, and my own account tries to use the PCI audio card!
REEDIT: No, there aren't two sound cards on my system, I mistook the onboard card for a seperate sound card.

How do I reconfigure my account to use the onboard device? (It isn't listed in alsamixer, but the BIOS says it's there.)

I have no idea what 'pulseaudio --XXXXXX' is doing on your system. As far as I know, it shouldnt do anything unless you have pulse installed.....

I guessed that you must have got the pusleaudio command from some ubuntu site, or from previous experience with ubuntu.

Errr.....if you have a soundcard, its well worth shutting off the onboard sound in your BIOS.

Besides the sound card being (in most cases) 'cleaner' than onboard sound, it also makes things easier with the mixer (if you only have one sound card, its normally used by defult) and should get you a tiny bit of resources back.

Thansk fro the vote of confidence. I was actually hoping that werner291 would run lspc (with or without the -v switch). Its a handy copmmand in these sorts of situations.

Hmmm....let me get this straight.

You've got your audio jacks hooked up to the onboard sound, when you login you get sounds, a 2nd account gets sound, but when you login to your account, you get no sounds at all?

That means to me that your onboard sound is working, and its something you have done that has killed the sound.

This command did the trick: "apt-get remove pulseaudio".

I didn't try that at first since I totally do not remember at all installing pulseaudio,
so I supposed it was part of the operating system or a dependency of some package.

But now, nothing seems to be wrong anymore. Thanks a lot for your help.

Your welcome Cascade-

So everything is ok now werner291?

You have sound?