Broke My Sound

[lannatwin]

I inadvertently tried watching a avi file before it had finished downloading. Now, my alsa S/PDIF output is no longer working.

I have checked all the settings in alsa mixer, and everything appears normal and not muted. When I boot from a live cd, sound works fine. Also tried reinstalling gstreamer. I am getting sound from the headphone jack.

Using Mint 7 amd64. Short of doing a complete reinstall, can anyone suggest anything? Thank you.

[igorzwx]

Try first to reload ALSA

sudo killall pulseaudio
sudo alsa force-reload

and them go to System>Preferences>Sound and change everything to ALSA

see:
http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=48&t=33291


EDIT: Aduka created a script for fixing this problem automatically
see:
http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=90&t=33559

[Aduka]

I made a cleaner post of how to make the script: http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=48&t=33575

Hope it helps,

Aduka

[lannatwin]

Thank you for the input. When I run sudo alsa force-reload, I get the following and still no sound. Thoughts?

peter@multimedia ~ $ sudo alsa force-reload
lsof: WARNING: can't stat() fuse.gvfs-fuse-daemon file system /home/peter/.gvfs
Output information may be incomplete.
Terminating processes: 4077lsof: WARNING: can't stat() fuse.gvfs-fuse-daemon file system /home/peter/.gvfs
Output information may be incomplete.
4327lsof: WARNING: can't stat() fuse.gvfs-fuse-daemon file system /home/peter/.gvfs
Output information may be incomplete.
lsof: WARNING: can't stat() fuse.gvfs-fuse-daemon file system /home/peter/.gvfs
Output information may be incomplete.
.
lsof: WARNING: can't stat() fuse.gvfs-fuse-daemon file system /home/peter/.gvfs
Output information may be incomplete.
Unloading ALSA sound driver modules: snd-hda-intel snd-pcm-oss snd-mixer-oss snd-pcm snd-seq-dummy snd-seq-oss snd-seq-midi snd-rawmidi snd-seq-midi-event snd-seq snd-timer snd-seq-device snd-page-alloc.
Loading ALSA sound driver modules: snd-hda-intel snd-pcm-oss snd-mixer-oss snd-pcm snd-seq-dummy snd-seq-oss snd-seq-midi snd-rawmidi snd-seq-midi-event snd-seq snd-timer snd-seq-device snd-page-alloc.

[lannatwin]

Digging around, I found these commands:

Code:
sudo apt-get --purge remove linux-sound-base alsa-base alsa-utils
(2) Reinstall those same packages
Code:
sudo apt-get install linux-sound-base alsa-base alsa-utils

• VERY IMPORTANT NOTE: Ubuntu (GNOME) users have reported that packages 'gdm' and 'ubuntu-desktop' are removed after removing the linux-sound-base packages.
  
  After running these and resetting everything in volume control, I have sound again!!

[igorzwx]

'ubuntu-desktop' is a meta package, it can be safely removed.

GNOME Display Manager (gdm) can be reinstalled

Your magic commands may also update ALSA, I presume.

The ALSA hackers tend to recommend this too:

ALSA Upgrade Script
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=6589810

EDIT:
QUOTE: "users have reported that packages 'gdm' ..."
this is because of "login sound".
That is why gdm depends on ALSA.