Comment 8 for bug 16670

I suspect the reporter of this bug either has his computer permanently plugged
in to stereo or headphones, or has a computer with some kind of internal speaker
output but no actual speakers.

I was hit by this bug when i upgraded to Hoary. I can no longer use my volume
keys on the laptop unless i'm using the internal speakers on my laptop. It did
work in Warty. No sane person would use the internal speakers, they're really
crappy, so in effect i have no working volume keys.

The problem is that when you plug something in the headphone socket, the
internal speakers are disabled. Since the master only affects the speakers, not
the headphone output, the master volume control is disabled too. Under ALSA i
can change the applet to target the "Headphone" output instead, but under OSS
there is no master volume control at all in this situation. There is no way to
make the shortcut buttons work as they insist on changing the ALSA Master channel.

Making the shortcut keys change the same channel as the volume applet would work
around this bug for me, and seems like the right thing overall. However, it
would still mean that the user would have to change the preferences each time he
plugged in a couple of headphones. So the ideal thing would be to have one
single channel for both headphone and speakers, at least on laptops (i've never
seen a laptop that does not disable the builtin speakers when headphones are
plugged in).

I don't know why Warty worked. Either the Master did affect the output, or the
shortcut keys respected the setting in the volume applet.

I have a Dell Latitude D800 with an audio device my system identifies as Intel
82801DB-ICH4, using the snd_intel8x0 module.