[SOLVED] 14.2/x86_64: sound system quit, refuses to work

rshepard · 06-12-2020, 11:12 AM

I'm running 14.2/x86_64 on this desktop. The sound system worked Wednesday morning, but quit sometime after that. When I tried to test the system in advance of a video meeting the microphone worked but no sound came from the speakers. Tried a couple of videos, but they remained silent.

Yesterday I futzed with it; the user command 'pulseaudio --start' worked while the running process list showed both the system and user invocations as running.

Today I re-installed alsa* and pulseaudio. Yet, pulseaudio-ctl again showed nothing working:
<quote>
$ pulseaudio-ctl
No PulseAudio daemon running, or not running as session daemon.
No PulseAudio daemon running, or not running as session daemon.
No PulseAudio daemon running, or not running as session daemon.
No PulseAudio daemon running, or not running as session daemon.
No PulseAudio daemon running, or not running as session daemon.
pulseaudio-ctl v1.67
...
Volume level :
Is sink muted :
Is source muted :
Detected sink :
Detected source :
</quote>

But,
<quote>
# ps ax | grep pulseaudio
30619 pts/2 S<l 0:00 /usr/bin/pulseaudio --system --disallow-module-loading
30679 pts/2 S+ 0:00 grep pulseaudio
</quote>

I've not had sound quit on me in the 17 years I've been running Slackware and I know only a little about oss, alsa, and pulseaudio so I need all the help I can get to understand what might be going on and how to fix it.

TIA,

Rich

bassmadrigal · 06-12-2020, 01:16 PM

Based on your ps ax output, it looks like you have pulseaudio running in system mode, which is not recommended. It is recommended to keep /etc/rc.d/rc.pulseaudio without the execute permission, and then the DE should start up pulse for you automatically.

From the rc.pulseaudio file:

Code:

# Start/stop/restart PulseAudio in system mode.
# In this mode, a single system instance of PulseAudio will be shared by
# multiple local users.
#
# Please note:  this is not generally the best way to use PulseAudio!
# Normally pulseaudio will start automatically as-needed with an instance
# per audio user.  Unless you really need to use system mode you should leave
# this script non-executable.
#
# For more information, see:
# http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/PulseAudio/Documentation/User/SystemWide

rshepard · 06-12-2020, 02:50 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bassmadrigal

Based on your ps ax output, it looks like you have pulseaudio running in system mode, which is not recommended. It is recommended to keep /etc/rc.d/rc.pulseaudio without the execute permission, and then the DE should start up pulse for you automatically.

Interesting. I had not explicitly set the execute bits on rc.pulseaudio when I installed 14.2 on this new desktop. And it worked. Regardless, I just turned off the execute bits for rc.pulseaudio.

The user command, 'pulseaudio --start' has been running. I logged out and back in and now pulseaudio-ctl shows:
[code]
Volume level : 70 %
Is sink muted : no
Is source muted : yes
Detected sink : 1
Detected source : 3
[\code]
but I cannot unmute the source. No sound when I try listening to a video, but the alsa speaker-test produces 'pink' noise from both speakers.

When I turn on the Audio-Technica AT2005USB pavucontrol's 'vu' meter shows when I speak into the mic.

If you have more recommendations on how I can unmute the source (despite the mic working) and get sound out to the speakers since speaker-test can do so I'd really appreciate it.

I'm trying to learn more about the audio system than I've needed in the past and issue-specific advice is helping.

Thanks,

Rich

rshepard · 06-12-2020, 04:27 PM

Got it all working. While pulseaudio-ctl continues to show the source muted, I can play an .mp3 music file on disk.

Thanks for prompting me to deactivate rc.pulseaudio. I've learned a lot these past few days.

Carpe weekend,

Rich