No sound after upgrade

[rihad]

Hi, I've just upgraded my Kubuntu 10.04 to 10.10 today as outlined here. Kpackagekit finished with errors probably due to this bug, but after reboot everything seemed fine, KDE booted OK, except for the sound. There isn't any.
Here's my lspci output:

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 82G33/G31/P35/P31 Express DRAM Controller (rev 02)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82G33/G31/P35/P31 Express PCI Express Root Port (rev 02)
00:1a.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #4 (rev 02)
00:1a.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #5 (rev 02)
00:1a.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #6 (rev 02)
00:1a.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #2 (rev 02)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) HD Audio Controller (rev 02)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 02)
00:1c.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 4 (rev 02)
00:1c.4 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 5 (rev 02)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 02)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 02)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 02)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #1 (rev 02)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 PCI Bridge (rev 92)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801IR (ICH9R) LPC Interface Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.2 RAID bus controller: Intel Corporation 82801 SATA RAID Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 02)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc RV370 [Sapphire X550 Silent]
01:00.1 Display controller: ATI Technologies Inc RV370 secondary [Sapphire X550 Silent]
03:00.0 SATA controller: JMicron Technology Corp. JMB362/JMB363 Serial ATA Controller (rev 02)
03:00.1 IDE interface: JMicron Technology Corp. JMB362/JMB363 Serial ATA Controller (rev 02)
04:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller (rev 01)
05:00.0 Ethernet controller: ADMtek NC100 Network Everywhere Fast Ethernet 10/100 (rev 11)

After some looking around I did this:

sudo modprobe snd-intel8x0

but it didn't help. Running mpg123 some_file.mp3 starts fine, but there's no sound. Also please note this:

$ aumix

aumix: error opening mixer: No such file or directory

$

Any suggestions? Thanks.

[Snowhog]

Re: No sound after upgrade

What does alsamixer show? Look for muted Master and/or PCM channels.

[rihad]

Re: No sound after upgrade

Both mics and "side" were down, bumping them had no effect.

Another unrelated showstopper: firefox's back and forward buttons have gone missing. Even in safe mode. That is, I can click something transparent there for the expected effect. I'm so tired of this...

[rihad]

Re: No sound after upgrade

Anyone, please? These two upgrade regressions are so annoying, I'm not sure which one is worse. Why are there always troubles with Ubuntu and its derivatives, I don't remember having any issues with Debian dist-upgrades I think this is because [K]ubuntu is a bit more intrusive than necessary.

[Snowhog]

Re: No sound after upgrade

Troubleshooting

If you get an error stating one of these possibilities:

Upgrading to a pre-release version of Ubuntu
Running the current pre-release version of Ubuntu
Unofficial software packages not provided by Ubuntu
try executing the following:

'sudo dpkg --configure -a' in a terminal.

Afterwards, reboot, and try the upgrade again. This should help to fix any broken packages that are missing due to upgrade problems.

Following the upgrade guide you linked to, were any errors reported?

[claydoh]

Re: No sound after upgrade

install pavucontrol to see if that allows you to control your audio.

[rihad]

Re: No sound after upgrade

install pavucontrol to see if that allows you to control your audio.

I downloaded and installed pavucontrol, and finally! "Mute audio" on the "output devices" was on. Turning it off made the music come out instantly. Thank you! ;-) So now do I need to manually unmute it every time I reboot? This is still ALSA, right? I checked, mixing works fine (two different songs playing at once). So this sound system is at least as feature rich as it used to be.

I still haven't solved the missing back and forward buttons in Firefox. I've already started in safe mode and reset all buttons to their factory defaults - no effect. It looks like the graphics resources themselves are missing. Here's my original posting with the picture attached:
http://kubuntuforums.net/forums/inde...8427#msg248427

[rihad]

Re: No sound after upgrade

As I suspected pulseaudio doesn't remember that audio should NOT be muted on every reboot. This didn't surprise me much. All I did was completely wipe it out from my system:

sudo dpkg --purge pulseaudio pavucontrol pulseaudio-module-bluetooth pulseaudio-module-x11 pulseaudio-esound-compat pulseaudio-utils

And voila! Excellent quality sound done by ALSA, with mixing abilities, persistent across reboots. Did I ever ask for pulse audio? No. Did I know what it is? No. Did the Kubuntu upgrade managers do a good job by making their user live one day with no sound coming out? Absolutely not. Like I said, kubuntu is too intrusive. My system now has more than 1300 packages installed, 95% of which I don't recognize and don't remember installing. Half of them are libraries...

[toad]

Re: No sound after upgrade

@ rihad

If you want control over your system you should not use "out of the box" distros such as the *buntus or even Debian, never mind Open Suse, Feodora or Mandriva but should go for either Linux from Scratch, Gentoo or ArchLinux. The choice is there for you to make. The fact that you have perhaps made the wrong choice is not Kubuntu's fault.

[sjhstorm]

Re: No sound after upgrade

In KMix>Settings>Configure-KMIx> under behavior untick "Restore volumes on login" this would have stopped the volume being muted upon start up.

This setting has been ticked by default on both and upgrade I did from 10.04 to 10.10 (and after a bit of distro hopping) and a clean install of 10.10. Although this is a good option to tick once you have set your levels (as it will restore them on each login) it should not be ticked on a new installation, also the channels should not be muted on a new install. The muted channel on install is not just a Kubuntu problem I have had the same with Ubuntu and Mint.

On a side note after an interesting period of distro hopping I have come back to Kubuntu as IMHO it's still the best.

[rihad]

Re: No sound after upgrade

@ toad

Debian+KDE was perfectly fine. I tried switching to Kubuntu in the hope of getting a "more frequently updated Debian+KDE". Gosh, was I wrong...

[rihad]

Re: No sound after upgrade

In KMix>Settings>Configure-KMIx> under behavior untick "Restore volumes on login" this would have stopped the volume being muted upon start up.

Just looked there - it has always been checked. Nevermind, it was pulseaudio daemon messing with the volume. Erasing it stopped the problem from occurring.

[Snowhog]

Re: No sound after upgrade

Debian+KDE was perfectly fine. I tried switching to Kubuntu in the hope of getting a "more frequently updated Debian+KDE". Gosh, was I wrong...

Not trying to stear you away from Kubuntu, but if you want a "more frequently updated Debian+KDE", you might want to consider aptosid, a "rolling release" distro.