No way to reset ALSA state from GUI

Sound is not working for me at all on my X60, on Gutsy. Should I file a new bug on 2.6.23?

This wont be fixed in feisty, so marking wont-fix there.

On Gutsy: Make sure you have linux-backports-modules installed

1. Delete /var/lib/alsa/asound.state
2. sudo rmmod snd-hda-intel
3. sudo modprobe snd-hda-intel

This should restore your mixer setting to default.
thomerz: Please report if this fixes your sound problems.

Note, you may have to stop your Gnome mixer in order to do this. I think
this command will do the trick. Don't "reload" it till you have done the
module dance.

ps ax | grep mixer_applet2 | grep -v grep | cut -d" " -f 1 | xargs kill
-HUP

Hi, I've got similar problem with my laptop. After recent upgrade sound completely disappeared.
It uses snd_intel_8x0 module and when I start for example gedit I get in console:
ALSA lib conf.c:3949:(snd_config_expand) Unknown parameters 0
ALSA lib pcm.c:2145:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM surround71:0
ALSA lib control.c:909:(snd_ctl_open_noupdate) Invalid CTL front:0

can't actually do rmmod on snd_intel_8x0 since it's being used by a number of other modules (I would better reboot, instead of removing them all...)

I think the issue we are finding is that an ALSA asound.state file
dumped by one version of the module causes silent problems with another.
There really should be a way to force a "fresh start" which updates that
file with some simple, universal settings.

btw, deleting asound.state and rebooting solved my problem

In /etc/init.d/alsa-utils there is a function "sanify_levels_on_card"
which seems useful as a "reset" option. We should expose this in the
mixer UI.

This problem turned out to be a bad /var/lib/alsa.state. I think we
should expose the "reset" function in /etc/init.d/alsa-utils in the UI
of the mixer. So one can go to the mixer, and press "reset" and have
that function called to sanity-check the state.

Mark

Attaching to gnome-applets in response to Mark's comments. But I am unable to mark it as a 'Wishlist' bug though...

I've sent this to the GNOME upstream tracker at: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=511778

Not a kernel issue

This problem normally raises it's head for me when there is some glitch in a stream using AC3 passthrough (DVD's) or when the player crashes during playback. This results in most audio playback ceasing to work *except* for AC3. If the asound.state is stuck configured for AC3 pass through, then it makes sense that non-AC3 sources would fail to work.

I'm using Hardy Beta and alsa-base 1.0.16-0ubuntu4

I'm finding I'm losing sound after suspending on Hardy Beta and have not been able to restart it until finding this thread. I also need to kill pulseaudio to unload the modules so I use the script below which combines most things here. Thanks for all the help and suggestions - not sure I yet understand what is causing my problem but a good workaround...

alsa-base/hardy uptodate 1.0.16-0ubuntu4
kernel - 2.6.24-14-generic #1 SMP
-------------------------
#!/bin/sh

#Kill all processes using sound and restart them

ps ax | grep mixer_applet2 | grep -v grep | cut -d" " -f 1 | xargs kill -HUP

killall pulseaudio

rm /var/lib/alsa/asound.state

rmmod snd-hda-intel

modprobe snd-hda-intel

pulseaudio &

Per a decision made by the Ubuntu Kernel Team, bugs will longer be assigned to the ubuntu-kernel-team in Launchpad as part of the bug triage process. The ubuntu-kernel-team is being unassigned from this bug report. Refer to https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KernelTeamBugPolicies for more information. Thanks.

/etc/init.d/alsa-utils reset Intel
got my sound working again - thanks a million! I was screwing around with settings trying to get the mic to work. I still cannot record from mic, but it could be worse.

Hardy has seen the end of its life and is no longer receiving any updates. Marking the Hardy task for this ticket as "Won't Fix".