UpdateManager Ate My Soundcard!

[Bart Silverstrim]

David Armour wrote:
<snip>
> The story so far/update:
> 
> Following a mostly-routine Update Manager process finished, about a week
> ago now, I found my Hardy desktop had become mute. At the time, error 
> messages suggested that I was missing a variety of gstreamer plug-ins that
> synaptic listed as installed. Go figure. Aplay -l, however, showed no sound 
> cards! Up-date manager ate my soundcard!
> 
> After  sudo apt-get install gdm ubuntu-desktop, aplay -l now shows:
> 
> **** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
> card 0: SI7012 [SiS SI7012], device 0: Intel ICH [SiS SI7012]
>   Subdevices: 0/1
>   Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
> 
> ...and media programs such as Rhythmbox play .mp3 files, although the vol-
> ume controls have complexified, inexplicably. The panel applet modifies the 
> sound output less predictably than before, and seems to require fiddling with 
> more audio icons than just the panel applet.
> 
> The log out/log in sounds play when tested, but the nifty panel timer applet
> flashes completion but doesn't play the ambulance sound file. And CBC's au-
> dio streams are still missing although -- the other google recommendation  -- 
> I *have*  libflashsupport installed.
> 
> No dice! What next, Ollies?

I just had a similar issue, right after an update! Weird.

I had to go in and keep playing with mixer settings until I could get 
the ALSA control to my sound card chipset (and not the USB mics from 
webcams) working. Seemed to pop up when I ran the alsamixer (is that the 
console utility for controlling an alsa device with an ncurses 
interface?); I ran it at the console, suddenly sound returned.

I had to install libflashsupport to get Firefox working with Youtube, 
though. It looked like it didn't previously have that installed. Did you 
try completely removing then reinstalling libflashsupport?