Keyboard volume keys only change PCM volume

[Ryan Lester]

Binary package hint: kubuntu-desktop

In Kubuntu Intrepid, the up/down volume keys (fn + Pg up/dn on my laptop (Compaq C770us)) only show the volume, instead of changing it like they're supposed to. However, the mute (fn + home) works perfectly. I've never had any problems in GNOME, so I'm not sure why I am in KDE. Also, I had an older laptop (HP dv6119us), and its volume keys wouldn't work in KDE either, but I had no problems in GNOME.

[Jonathan Thomas (echidnaman)]

Confirming due to dupe.

[Gletscher (gletscherspalte)]

Confirm, Asus U3s, Fn + F11 / F12 for Vol up and down shows the blue bar with 81%, nothing changes, F10 for mute works

Kubuntu Beta 8.10

[Jonathan Thomas (echidnaman)]

I find that the volume keys will *always* change the volume of the PCM channel. If you have the master channel set to front, pressing the volume keys will show front's volume on the OSD (which doesn't change) while at the same time changing the PCM channel's volume.

[Gustavo A. Díaz (gdiaz)]

Exactly this is what happening to me too.

[Teodor Milkov (tm-del)]

Same for me - Volume Up/Down keys always change the volume of PCM channel although I've selected Front as the Master Channel.

[mitsarionas (mitsarionas)]

Same here on a Toshiba A200 laptop... (volume up/down only affects PCM, no matter the selected master channel)
What's more, changing the shortcuts from system settings>keyboard&mouse>keyboard shortcuts to assign volume up/down to changing the front channel's volume makes the controls do nothing at all.
Another thing is that several sounds, such as startup/shutdown and sounds from emesene aren't affected by PCM volume, only by the front channel one. (this is probably irrelevant, it just occurred at the same time...thought it wouldn't hurt to mention)

[John Dong (jdong)]

I decided to fix this tonight:

Attached is an updated kubuntu_02_kmix_keyboard_shortcuts.diff which retrieves the mixer device the user selected in (right click kmix -> choose master), and changes the volume and muting of that channel rather than naively assuming PCM by default.

[John Dong (jdong)]

Sorry for the spammage, updated the patch to clean out a //FIXME: Don't hardcode , now that we don't hardcode :)

[John Dong (jdong)]

For our testers, I also uploaded a build of kdemultimedia with this patch to https://edge.launchpad.net/~jdong/+archive

(NOTE: I might have other cruft in my PPA, I don't recommend adding the whole thing. Just pick out the .deb for kmix, that's all that has changed)

[Ryan Lester (buu700)]

Thanks a lot. The upgraded Kmix works like a charm here. Out of curiosity, was this an upstream bug or a Kubuntu bug?

[John Dong (jdong)]

This is a Kubuntu bug, but only because upstream actually doesn't have any support by default for global volume hotkeys. The Kubuntu patch by the name above adds support by registering global hotkeys bound to the volume keys. However, for one reason or another, they hardcoded device master:0 channel PCM as the one to mix. My patch instead retrieves the KMix master MixerDevice setting as the user sets in the kmix right click menu.

[mitsarionas (mitsarionas)]

cool... now works like it should here too... thanks!

[Teodor Milkov (tm-del)]

Works for me now. Thanks.

[Gustavo A. Díaz (gdiaz)]

Well, hope that now Kubuntu devs upload this fix soon.
Works for me too.

2008/11/3 Teodor Milkov <email address hidden>

> Works for me now. Thanks.
>
> --
> Keyboard volume keys only change PCM volume
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/267245
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of a duplicate bug.
>

--
Gustavo A. Díaz
GDNet Projects
www.gdnet.com.ar

[Alejandro Díaz-Caro (janus)]

That package solved the problem for me too (amd64). Thanks for the patch!

[mickru (info-michael-krueger)]

Not a single one of the multimedia key's work from my Dell XPS M1210. Here is the output of xev:

KeyPress event, serial 31, synthetic NO, window 0x5000001,
    root 0x1a6, subw 0x0, time 21635300, (-16,592), root:(1068,741),
    state 0x0, keycode 121 (keysym 0x1008ff12, XF86AudioMute), same_screen YES,
    XLookupString gives 0 bytes:
    XmbLookupString gives 0 bytes:
    XFilterEvent returns: False

KeyRelease event, serial 34, synthetic NO, window 0x5000001,
    root 0x1a6, subw 0x0, time 21635434, (-16,592), root:(1068,741),
    state 0x0, keycode 121 (keysym 0x1008ff12, XF86AudioMute), same_screen YES,
    XLookupString gives 0 bytes:
    XFilterEvent returns: False

KeyPress event, serial 34, synthetic NO, window 0x5000001,
    root 0x1a6, subw 0x0, time 21638650, (-16,592), root:(1068,741),
    state 0x0, keycode 122 (keysym 0x1008ff11, XF86AudioLowerVolume), same_screen YES,
    XLookupString gives 0 bytes:
    XmbLookupString gives 0 bytes:
    XFilterEvent returns: False

KeyRelease event, serial 34, synthetic NO, window 0x5000001,
    root 0x1a6, subw 0x0, time 21638856, (-16,592), root:(1068,741),
    state 0x0, keycode 122 (keysym 0x1008ff11, XF86AudioLowerVolume), same_screen YES,
    XLookupString gives 0 bytes:
    XFilterEvent returns: False

KeyPress event, serial 34, synthetic NO, window 0x5000001,
    root 0x1a6, subw 0x0, time 21640240, (-16,592), root:(1068,741),
    state 0x0, keycode 123 (keysym 0x1008ff13, XF86AudioRaiseVolume), same_screen YES,
    XLookupString gives 0 bytes:
    XmbLookupString gives 0 bytes:
    XFilterEvent returns: False

KeyRelease event, serial 34, synthetic NO, window 0x5000001,
    root 0x1a6, subw 0x0, time 21640412, (-16,592), root:(1068,741),
    state 0x0, keycode 123 (keysym 0x1008ff13, XF86AudioRaiseVolume), same_screen YES,
    XLookupString gives 0 bytes:
    XFilterEvent returns: False

KeyPress event, serial 34, synthetic NO, window 0x5000001,
    root 0x1a6, subw 0x0, time 21641618, (-16,592), root:(1068,741),
    state 0x0, keycode 172 (keysym 0x1008ff14, XF86AudioPlay), same_screen YES,
    XLookupString gives 0 bytes:
    XmbLookupString gives 0 bytes:
    XFilterEvent returns: False

KeyRelease event, serial 34, synthetic NO, window 0x5000001,
    root 0x1a6, subw 0x0, time 21641858, (-16,592), root:(1068,741),
    state 0x0, keycode 172 (keysym 0x1008ff14, XF86AudioPlay), same_screen YES,
    XLookupString gives 0 bytes:
    XFilterEvent returns: False

KeyPress event, serial 34, synthetic NO, window 0x5000001,
    root 0x1a6, subw 0x0, time 21643085, (-16,592), root:(1068,741),
    state 0x0, keycode 173 (keysym 0x1008ff16, XF86AudioPrev), same_screen YES,
    XKeysymToKeycode returns keycode: 144
    XLookupString gives 0 bytes:
    XmbLookupString gives 0 bytes:
    XFilterEvent returns: False

KeyRelease event, serial 34, synthetic NO, window 0x5000001,
    root 0x1a6, subw 0x0, time 21643265, (-16,592), root:(1068,741),
    state 0x0, keycode 173 (keysym 0x1008ff16, XF86AudioPrev), same_screen YES,
    XKeysymToKeycode returns keycode: 144
    XLookupString gives 0 bytes:
    XFilterEvent returns: False

KeyPress event, serial 34, synthetic NO, window 0x50000...

[Giorgos Kylafas (gekylafas)]

Installing newest intrepid packages for KDE 4.1.3 solved this issue for me, as well.

[Jonathan Thomas (echidnaman)]

This bug was fixed in kdemultimedia (4:4.1.3-0ubuntu1~intrepid1
-----------------
kdemultimedia (4:4.1.3-0ubuntu1~intrepid1) intrepid; urgency=low

  [ Roderick B. Greening ]
  * New upstream release

  [ John Dong ]
  * Fix kubuntu_02_kmix_keyboard_shortcuts.diff to not assume kmix' master
    channel is PCM (LP: #267245)

 -- Harald Sitter < <email address hidden>> Mon, 03 Nov 2008 18:20:09 +0100

[Scott Kitterman (kitterman)]

Backports doesn't count for fix released. Needs to be in Jaunty.

[mickru (info-michael-krueger)]

Hi,

I found what the problem was on my Dell XPS notebook.
The problem was that I did an upgrade from Kubuntu 8.04 running KDE 3.5.xx and KDE 4.1 side by side, to Kubuntu 8.10.
Somehow the upgrade process did fail to update/replace my kmix application. I did realize this just recently during the regular update notification where an update to kmix was repeatly showing. Only a few day's ago I realized that an update was offered to kmix, but was not selected to actually perform the update. When I manually selected kmix upgrade, automatically the removal of:
kmix-kde4
...
did show in Adept. That means I have been running the old kmix-kde4 package causing my problems. Now with the real kmix version from the 8.10 KDE release, I do have my volume buttons working again.

Maybe this is a hint to other's having a problem with kmix ...

[Luis Fernando Planella Gonzalez (luisfpg)]

It works now for volume increase / decrease.
But for mute, there is no feedback on the OSD (like 0% or "Mute").
As far as I remember, the OSD used to indicated 0% before...
The KMix icon does changes when muted, and is the only visual clue.

[James (james-ellis-gmail)]

Setting the Master Channel to "Front" now works for me, previously it had the adjust PCM behaviour documented previously.

The volume keys now work and Mute sets the OSD to 0%.

BTW, finding "Select Master Channel..." is a pain, it doesn't appear in Kmix settings anywhere I can find - it's only in the right click on systray icon context menu.

[Luis Fernando Planella Gonzalez (luisfpg)]

You are right.
When setting the master channel to "Front", the OSD shows 0% when muted.
However, when the master channel is "PCM" (the default, at least for me), the mute feedback on OSD does not work.

[GreatBunzinni (greatbunzinni)]

I've upgraded to KDE 4.1.3 and it appears that this bug is fixed. Kudos!

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package kdemultimedia - 4:4.1.3-0ubuntu1~intrepid1

---------------
kdemultimedia (4:4.1.3-0ubuntu1~intrepid1) intrepid; urgency=low

  [ Roderick B. Greening ]
  * New upstream release

  [ John Dong ]
  * Fix kubuntu_02_kmix_keyboard_shortcuts.diff to not assume kmix' master
    channel is PCM (LP: #267245)

 -- Harald Sitter <email address hidden> Mon, 03 Nov 2008 18:20:09 +0100