[GRLUG] strange audio levels problem

[John-Thomas Richards]

On Thu, Jun 23, 2011 at 02:35:19PM -0400, Michael Mol wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 23, 2011 at 2:14 PM, John-Thomas Richards <jtr at jrichards.org> wrote:
> > On Wed, Jun 22, 2011 at 07:48:39AM -0400, Michael Mol wrote:
> >> That would be the ALSA Pulse daemon, most likely. What's the output of
> >> 'alsa-info'?
> >
> > I have no such file/command.
> >
> 
> Came pre-installed on my Gentoo box, and I know I've retrieved it via
> package manager on Ubuntu. I don't know where it resides in Debian.
> 
> http://www.alsa-project.org/alsa-info.sh

It isn't in Debian.  :-\  Not as "alsa-info" anyway.

> >> I don't know enough about Openbox to make a whole lot of
> >> recommendations there. If it has some kind of applet or panel system,
> >> there might be sound settings coming in from those as they come up.
> >
> > When I start twm via gdm3 Pulse is running, which means gdm3 is starting
> > it for me (since twm is certainly not starting it).   And the levels are
> > random.  My guess is gdm3 is messing with them.
> >
> > Here is something that is odd.  I stopped the display manager and x
> > altogether, and rebooted into multiuser without x.  I logged in at the
> > console.  Pulse was not running anywhere on the system, by any user.  I
> > ran alsamixer from the console and the levels were jacked again.  I set
> > them and stored them (as root, `alsactl store').  Rebooted (so as to
> > ensure a clean environment) and checked alsamixer again.  The levels are
> > being jacked by Pulse itself, it appears.
> >
> >> Also, I'd assumed you were already running xdm or some such. If you're
> >> accustomed to using startx, then 'startx xterm' would get you to that
> >> barebones X environment I was talking about earlier. That's probably
> >> not very relevant at this point, though.
> >
> > For some reason startx isn't working.  That bothers me.  On a laptop I
> > generally run a display manager.  It bails with these errors in
> > /var/log:
> >
> > [150164.895] (EE) Query no Synaptics: 6003C8
> > [150164.895] (--) SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad: no supported touchpad
> > found
> > [150164.895] (EE) SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad Unable to query/initialize
> > Synaptics hardware.
> > [150164.896] (EE) PreInit returned 11 for "SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad"
> 
> Hm. Can you see if gdm3 is somehow loading modules (either kernel or
> Xorg) that aren't getting loaded if you launch from startx? You might
> compare the relevant lines of Xorg.log from your startx and your gdm3
> sessions.

Here's a pastebin'd diff: http://pastebin.com/qRA5Ye82

> It sounds like we've got two problems to solve. First is figure out
> why you can't use plain startx, and fix that; that'll simplify solving
> the second problem, which is Pulse+gdm3 is adjusting your ALSA mixer
> settings.
> 
> Now, to be honest, it's perfectly OK for Pulse to modify ALSA mixer
> levels; that's one of a few ways it can control volume levels, and
> modifying ALSA mixer levels allows usage of hardware capabilities for
> the purpose. The trouble is that they're not coming back and being
> reset to useful values on reboot.

Right.  Thanks again.
-- 
john-thomas
------
Space isn't remote at all. It's only an hour's drive away if your car
could go straight upwards.
Fred Hoyle, Astronomer, mathematician, writer (1915- )

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