Sound suddenly not working in 9.10

[merekat]

After installing kernel upgrades yesterday, all sound is suddenly not working. I also installed mplayer yesterday; which I briefly uninstalled today, at which point I had sound at the GUI login screen, but no video. Shut down, rebooted, video back, but no sound.

Release: 9.10
Package: alsa-base, 1.0.20+dfsg-1ubuntu5

Other package info visible in attached screenshot of package manager.

ProblemType: Bug
AplayDevices:
 **** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
 card 0: VT82xx [HDA VIA VT82xx], device 1: ALC662 rev1 Digital [ALC662 rev1 Digital]
   Subdevices: 1/1
   Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
Architecture: i386
ArecordDevices: **** List of CAPTURE Hardware Devices ****
AudioDevicesInUse: Error: command ['fuser', '-v', '/dev/snd/by-path', '/dev/snd/controlC0', '/dev/snd/pcmC0D1p', '/dev/snd/hwC0D0', '/dev/snd/seq', '/dev/snd/timer', '/dev/sequencer2', '/dev/sequencer'] failed with exit code 1:
Card0.Amixer.info:
 Card hw:0 'VT82xx'/'HDA VIA VT82xx at 0xfebfc000 irq 17'
   Mixer name : 'Realtek ALC662 rev1'
   Components : 'HDA:10ec0662,18490662,00100101'
   Controls : 20
   Simple ctrls : 10
CheckboxSubmission: bf7476d5da96670d0e68e8d832a902db
CheckboxSystem: 0531969bcfd4f03af7405c98dc94a948
Date: Sun Dec 6 10:28:34 2009
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.10
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 9.10 "Karmic Koala" - Release i386 (20091028.5)
Package: alsa-base 1.0.20+dfsg-1ubuntu5
PackageArchitecture: all
ProcEnviron:
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.31-16.52-generic
SourcePackage: alsa-driver
Uname: Linux 2.6.31-16-generic i686

[Daniel T Chen (crimsun)]

Are the following mixer controls intentionally zeroed? If not, please
use alsamixer or amixer in a Terminal to adjust them:

Simple mixer control 'Surround',0
  Capabilities: pvolume pswitch
  Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right
  Limits: Playback 0 - 6
  Mono:
  Front Left: Playback 0 [0%] [-2670.50dB] [on]
  Front Right: Playback 0 [0%] [-2670.50dB] [on]
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Simple mixer control 'Center',0
  Capabilities: pvolume pvolume-joined pswitch pswitch-joined
  Playback channels: Mono
  Limits: Playback 0 - 6
  Mono: Playback 0 [0%] [-2670.50dB] [on]
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Simple mixer control 'LFE',0
  Capabilities: pvolume pvolume-joined pswitch pswitch-joined
  Playback channels: Mono
  Limits: Playback 0 - 6
  Mono: Playback 0 [0%] [-2670.50dB] [on]
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

[merekat (leahthelioness)]

Mixer controls are not intentionally zeroed. And as it turns out, alsamixer is apparently not loading at all:

$ alsamixer
alsamixer: function snd_mixer_load failed: Invalid argument

$ amixer
amixer: Mixer default load error: Invalid argument

[Daniel T Chen (crimsun)]

Is this reproducible after installing
linux-backports-modules-alsa-karmic-generic? (Also, ensure that
linux-backports-modules-alsa-$(uname -r) is installed.)

[merekat (leahthelioness)]

Voila!

Installed linux-backports-modules-alsa-karmic-generic. Verified that linux-backports-modules-alsa-$(uname -r) is installed. Rebooted- no change. Ran alsamixer, turned everything up (most things were up except the beep), rebooted again. Voila, sound! Including my "everything's ok" beep.

Thank you Daniel.... much appreciated. I don't understand why this happened, and after reading numerous bug reports of similar things happening to others, I really hope it doesn't happen again. I'm gonna try another reboot to make sure.

[merekat (leahthelioness)]

Spoke too soon.

Rebooted, sound is off again. Sound preferences show that my sound card is not being detected and output is dummy (see attached screenshot).

Alsamixer shows everything reset to zero, and my soundcard not being detected.

Result of amixer is:

Simple mixer control 'Master',0
  Capabilities: pswitch pswitch-joined
  Playback channels: Mono
  Mono: Playback [on]
Simple mixer control 'IEC958',0
  Capabilities: pswitch pswitch-joined
  Playback channels: Mono
  Mono: Playback [off]
Simple mixer control 'IEC958 Default PCM',0
  Capabilities: pswitch pswitch-joined
  Playback channels: Mono
  Mono: Playback [on]
Simple mixer control 'Capture',0
  Capabilities: cvolume cswitch
  Capture channels: Front Left - Front Right
  Limits: Capture 0 - 31
  Front Left: Capture 17 [55%] [12.00dB] [on]
  Front Right: Capture 17 [55%] [12.00dB] [on]
Simple mixer control 'Capture',1
  Capabilities: cvolume cswitch
  Capture channels: Front Left - Front Right
  Limits: Capture 0 - 31
  Front Left: Capture 9 [29%] [0.00dB] [off]
  Front Right: Capture 9 [29%] [0.00dB] [off]
Simple mixer control 'Beep',0
  Capabilities: pvolume pswitch
  Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right
  Limits: Playback 0 - 31
  Mono:
  Front Left: Playback 0 [0%] [-34.50dB] [off]
  Front Right: Playback 0 [0%] [-34.50dB] [off]

[merekat (leahthelioness)]

Second screenshot of sound prefs showing dummy output.

[merekat (leahthelioness)]

Second screenshot of sound prefs showing dummy output.

[merekat (leahthelioness)]

Sorry for the duplicate comment above.

Also, I was incorrect on one point: alsamixer IS seeing my sound card. (See attached screenshot.)

However, now when I try to turn up all controls, I am unable to make any changes to Master, IEC 58, and EC958 D.

[merekat (leahthelioness)]

I really don't get it. I rebooted again, and all's well. Sound prefs show my sound card, alsamixer shows all controls (see attached screenshot again), and I can make changes to them.

[Daniel T Chen (crimsun)]

Do you have timidity, jackd, sl-modem-daemon, or hsfmodem installed?

On Dec 8, 2009 9:40 PM, "merekat" <email address hidden> wrote:

I really don't get it. I rebooted again, and all's well. Sound prefs
show my sound card, alsamixer shows all controls (see attached
screenshot again), and I can make changes to them.

** Attachment added: "Screenshot-alsamixerboot2.png"
  http://launchpadlibrarian.net/36608740/Screenshot-alsamixerboot2.png

-- Sound suddenly not working in 9.10
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/493207You received this bug...

[merekat (leahthelioness)]

None of the following are installed: timidity, jackd, sl-modem-daemon, or hsfmodem.

[Daniel T Chen (crimsun)]

Please see https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PulseAudio/Log, then.

[Brad Figg (brad-figg)]

Hi merekat,

Please, if you are still having issues, test with the latest development release of Ubuntu. ISO CD images are available from http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/ .

If it remains an issue, could you run the following command from a Terminal (Applications->Accessories->Terminal). It will automatically gather and attach updated debug information to this report.

apport-collect -p alsa-base 493207

Also, if you could test the latest upstream kernel available that would be great. It will allow additional upstream developers to examine the issue. Refer to https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KernelMainlineBuilds .

Once you've tested the upstream kernel, please remove the 'needs-upstream-testing' tag. This can be done by clicking on the yellow pencil icon next to the tag located at the bottom of the bug description and deleting the 'needs-upstream-testing' text.

Please let us know your results.

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[Brad Figg (brad-figg)]

This bug report was marked as Incomplete and has not had any updated comments for quite some time. As a result this bug is being closed. Please reopen if this is still an issue in the current Ubuntu release http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download . Also, please be sure to provide any requested information that may have been missing. To reopen the bug, click on the current status under the Status column and change the status back to "New". Thanks.

[This is an automated message. Apologies if it has reached you inappropriately; please just reply to this message indicating so.]