[arch-general] [hacked solution] Re: GDM and/or PulseAudio mute my sound

[Rodrigo Rivas]

On Sun, Sep 9, 2012 at 9:33 PM, Kyle <kyle at gmx.ca> wrote:

> It's a bit of a dirty hack, but it works on this box, and I wouldn't
> hesitate to use it anywhere it's needed.
>
> If PulseAudio is muting your master volume control when it starts, first
> copy /usr/bin/start/pulseaudio-x11 to /usr/local/bin
>
> sudo cp /usr/bin/start-pulseaudio-x11 /usr/local/bin
>
> Edit the local copy (/usr/local/bin/start-**pulseaudio-x11) and add a
> line similar to the following at the end of the file:
>
> amixer -D hw set Master 92% unmute
>
> Again, it's a hack, but it effectively gives all GNOME users, and
> hopefully anyone else on the system who starts a PulseAudio session, sound
> at a sensible volume. The same or similar line should be able to be added
> to start-pulseaudio-kde in the same way, and it can also be added to your
> local shell configuration/profile as well if you start PulseAudio some
> other way. It doesn't fix the bug specifically, but it gives satisfactory
> results.


I don't have this particular bug, but I guess that it is related to
pulseaudio trying to save and restore the volume of the soundcard between
sessions. Can you try commenting out the relevant lines in the file
"/etc/pulse/default.pa" (or "~/.pulse/default.pa" if it exist) and
"/etc/pulse/system.pa". The relevant lines are the ones just after the
comments:

    ### Automatically restore the volume of streams and devices

Maybe only one of them is faulty (I bet on "module-card-restore"), but you
may start removing all of them and see whether it helps.

Regards.
-- 
Rodrigo