Re: Mint 14 no sound
fixed, solved, resolved (for now)
Hi
I too have been all around the system looking at diagnostics & solutions that don't actually work.
Try this: fire up a terminal & give it
sudo alsactl -F init
If alsactl is not there, you may need to use software manager to get it.
That's it. Worked for me.
REVISION
Within a short time, sound was gone again.
(I wonder how long this will last as a working solution? Mysterious unssen forces seem to be at work...)
First install & update alsamixer if it's not there.
I have alsamixergui, alsa-utils, alsa-base installed, together with pulseaudio & supporting libraries. Use Admin > Syanptic, and Admin > UpdateManager to install.
As above, in terminal
sudo alsactl -F init
then I found a need to tweak alsamixer.
in terminal
sudo alsamixer
Which generally comes up as a coloured panel with
Master selected
use
up-arrow to up the volume of the Master control.
Now scroll across the alsamixer controls using right-arrow >>, until you see the
automute column
use
down-arrow to set auto-mute to
disabled
Sound works again (for now...)
Proviso
Now, if you really don't have a correct sound driver, or your sound card is U/S, it isn't going to help much.
Other posts have covered in depth how to grope around to attempt fixes for that.
The alsamixer has F2 for system info (up/down arrows, enter to proceed, esc to get back)
and F6 for card selection (up/down arrows, enter)
This is how it went, the story so far:
I fired up a live DVD of Mint 14 Cinnamon ( 64-bit version).
Because I'd lost sound before, I checked at various stages in my customisation that prefs->sound->[hardware] , [Test Speakers] (lower right of panel) was sounding out.
Sound was initially present, but went AWOL as soon as I fired up the (should have been updated) Firefox, & set a FF password.
What's happening with Update Manager I don't know. It's trying to download AMD software for a non-AMD machine, presumably for the ATI/AMD RADEON video driver for an imaginary Radeon sound card which I don't have. There are missing repos. It hangs without giving a sensible reason.
I could really do with a working non-free nVidia driver, in a way that doesn't require reboot (which one can't do with live DVD). but that's another matter.
Other distros manage to do that, it's bitterly disappointing that Mint chooses not to. NIH maybe.
Anyway, Update should have given me FF 20.0, but I see I still have the rather ancient FF 16.0.1 Odd.
Update seems to be FUBA, failing to upload the right things, sticking at file 55 of 111, saying "no space left on device" when there's plenty.
These are quite ancient & venerable errors, and
really should have been fixed by now.
Sometimes I honestly suspect sabotage (but no-one would do that would they?) Surely it can't be foolishness or indifference?
Then I'm into
dpkg was interrupted, you must manually run 'sudo dpkg --configure -a' to correct the problem.
E: _cache->open() failed, please report.
SNAFU
Perhaps I should have done a bleachbit earlier, but there seemed genuinely to be no need up until Firefox.
I am unhappy.
All that fell into place after stopping FF, running bleachbit (with the right language parameters) and a terminal > sudo dpkg --configure -a'
as suggested.
To return to sound issues:
I had already installed alsamixer, but it didn't look right, with only master-in & master-out levels. And no colour. And it didn't bring sound back.
I decided to take radical approach, to see if there was a repair already available.
first I fired up a terminal & asked > apropos alsa
which was unenlightening
so, > apropos sound
(cunning, eh?) Which brought up, inter alia, something called "alsactl - advanced controls for ALSA soundcard driver "
Worth a try I thought.
After looking at alsactl --help, I first tried command >alsactl -F restore
(just in case it had been backed up ) No dice.
Go for it:
sudo alsactl -F init
and that works! (Good, init?)
Found hardware: "HDA-Intel" "Nvidia MCP77/78 HDMI" "HDA:10ec0888,1025015e,00100202 HDA:14f12c06,1025015e,
00100000 HDA:10de0003,10de0101,00100000" "0x1025" "0x015e"
Hardware is initialized using a generic method
...and faint noises from the sound test!
So, continue to > sudo alsamixer
which is now its technicolour self again. Use up-arrow to up the master volume (left/right arrows to select channel) (ctl-C to exit back to terminal)
Yippee, sound!!
Flash is version 11,2,202,243 and is still c### ("code")
Something is awry with the Firefox install. I suppose Minters & Mozilla can argue amongst themselves. Shouldn't take long. I blame Firefox & the culture therein, but I could be wrong.
Something is very wrong with the Updater, missing repositories, wrong things being detected & asked for.
I should raise some bugg reports.
UPDATE
This gets weird. Next day, after using the plain
sudo alsactl -F init approach, no sound again.
I re-tried > sudo alsactl -F init
nothing. Silence.
It seems that
something had set alsamixer "automute" to
enabled.
Very funny... Do these things really happen on their own? Should I call an exorcist?
This is puzzling to the casual observer, because one doesn't see the automute column in alsamixer as it comes up in the terminal (unless the terminal is very wide) - it's hidden way over to the right of the visible panel.
So,
in terminal,
sudo alsamixer
then
right-arrow until you see
automute (turns red)
down-arrow to set auto-mute to
disabled
This took me a little extra forum seeking.
The tip about automute,
http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.p ... 47#p649966 by
Dreamingtune (thanks),
I also found this
http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=48&t=127302
Two posts by
kvnsz on Sat Mar 02, 2013
First, kvnsz has found a working fix & published it.
Minutes later, he reports sound was off again.
It must be gremlins.