Intrepid Sound Fixes

[Rashkae]

Steve Flynn wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 19, 2008 at 4:41 PM, Karl Larsen <k5di at zianet.com> wrote:
> 
>> The trick works inserting "ifconfig wlan0 down" (or the active network
>> interface in use) at the begining of the stop) section of /etc/init.d/alsa-utils.
> 
>> Btw, if your alsa-mixer is always mute at system start, and does not
>> remember the last settings, the trick also fixes it.
> 
> Karl, on the basis that you've probably done more digging into this
> than most people, have you come across any information which explains
> *why* dropping ethernet networks fixes a problem with alsa-mixer?
> Makes absolutely no sense to me at all, and I can't actually come up
> with a scenario where even a driver bug would cause something like
> this to happen.
> 
> I don't suffer from this issue, but from a technical standpoint I'd be
> quite interested in finding out what the cause of the problem actually
> was... I'd not be overly keen on shoving ifconfig statements into the
> shutdown script for the sound subsystem either, as in 2 years time
> I'll have no idea they are there and if I DO come across them I'll
> have no idea WHY they are there.
> 
> Any pointers to relevant webpages/forums/bug-reports would be appreciated.
> 

I haven't dug into the Intrepid scripts, so I might be off base as to
the nature of the problem.  However, I have had to deal with similar
alsa weirdness before, and here's a good hack that probably works in
Intrepid as well and won't require changing networking.

Basically, the problem (that I know of) is with the comon practice in
most distributions, icluding Ubuntu, to include "alsactl store" command
in Alsa shut down script.

In theory, that means alsa will restore the same settings on bootup as
it was in shutdown.  In practice, if your alsa settings are awry, (and
I've seen cases where alsa config was rendered broken in ways that
alsamixer could not fix,) it's *very* hard to get rid of since the
broken settings get saved again every time you shut down. The
non-technical way to resolve this was to delete the file where alsactl
stores configuration, sync, then hard power off.

My suggestion is this.  Modify the /etc/init.d and comment out the line
that stores the sound levels.. (ex: store_levels "$TARGET_CARD" ||
EXITSTATUS=1).

Now run alsa mixer, set the volume to how you want it, and sudo alsactl
store.  Now when you reboot, sound levels will be how you last
configured them, and will no longer try to save the volume levels at
every shutdown.

Apologies if this suggestions don't apply to Intrepid.