[Satellite M115, Realtek ALC861-VD, Green Headphone Out, Front] No sound at all

[Gerald]

I recently installed Ubuntu 14.04.4 LTS on this old laptop for my daughter to use. There are two audio issues, however. The OS doesn't appear to find the speaker on the laptop, so no sound plays them. While there is sound through the headphones, it is so low as to be inaudible.

I've worked through some of the sound troubleshooting guide, but run into issues with it as well. The very first command suggested to run "killall pulseaudio; rm -r ~/.config/pulse/* ; rm -r ~/.pulse*" returns the outout:
pulseaudio(1616): Operation not permitted
rm: cannot remove ‘/home/user/.pulse*’: No such file or directory

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 14.04
Package: pulseaudio 1:4.0-0ubuntu11.1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.2.0-38.45~14.04.1-generic 4.2.8-ckt10
Uname: Linux 4.2.0-38-generic i686
ApportVersion: 2.14.1-0ubuntu3.21
Architecture: i386
AudioDevicesInUse:
 USER PID ACCESS COMMAND
 /dev/snd/pcmC0D0c: gerald 3518 F...m pulseaudio
 /dev/snd/pcmC0D0p: gerald 3518 F...m pulseaudio
 /dev/snd/controlC0: gerald 3518 F.... pulseaudio
CurrentDesktop: Unity
Date: Tue Jun 14 10:04:05 2016
EcryptfsInUse: Yes
InstallationDate: Installed on 2016-05-26 (18 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 14.04.4 LTS "Trusty Tahr" - Release i386 (20160217.1)
SourcePackage: pulseaudio
Symptom: audio
Symptom_AlsaPlaybackTest: ALSA playback test through plughw:SB successful
Symptom_Card: Built-in Audio - HDA ATI SB
Symptom_DevicesInUse:
 USER PID ACCESS COMMAND
 /dev/snd/pcmC0D0c: gerald 3518 F...m pulseaudio
 /dev/snd/pcmC0D0p: gerald 3518 F...m pulseaudio
 /dev/snd/controlC0: sydney 1616 F.... pulseaudio
                      gerald 3518 F.... pulseaudio
Symptom_Jack: Green Headphone Out, Front
Symptom_PulsePlaybackTest: PulseAudio playback test failed
Symptom_SpeakerTestPulseStderr: W r i t e e r r o r : - 3 2 , B r o k e n p i p e
Symptom_Type: No sound at all
Title: [Satellite M115, Realtek ALC861-VD, Green Headphone Out, Front] No sound at all
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)
dmi.bios.date: 08/24/2006
dmi.bios.vendor: Phoenix Technologies LTD
dmi.bios.version: 1.00
dmi.board.name: SB450
dmi.board.vendor: ATI
dmi.board.version: Rev0.4b
dmi.chassis.asset.tag: No Asset Tag
dmi.chassis.type: 1
dmi.chassis.vendor: ATI
dmi.chassis.version: N/A
dmi.modalias: dmi:bvnPhoenixTechnologiesLTD:bvr1.00:bd08/24/2006:svnTOSHIBA:pnSatelliteM115:pvrPSMB6U-00G00C:rvnATI:rnSB450:rvrRev0.4b:cvnATI:ct1:cvrN/A:
dmi.product.name: Satellite M115
dmi.product.version: PSMB6U-00G00C
dmi.sys.vendor: TOSHIBA