I’m trying to understand why alsamixer’s playback volume is not restored after reboot.
From my understanding, it should be done by alsa-restore.service
Basically this service launches alsactl store when shutting down the computer and alsactl restore when starting. I also tested and those commands work perfectly fine when launched as super user. They use the default file /var/lib/alsa/asound.state and I tested both directions by testing the file is modified by storing and that manually modifying the file before restoring works.
I also tested that the service is executed and, according to journalctl, it is.
So far so good.
However, the “Headphone Playback Volume” is always reset to 0 after rebooting.
I modified the service to debug, here is the content:
#
# Note that two different ALSA card state management schemes exist and they
# can be switched using a file exist check - /etc/alsa/state-daemon.conf .
#
[Unit]
Description=Save/Restore Sound Card State
ConditionPathExists=!/etc/alsa/state-daemon.conf
ConditionPathExistsGlob=/dev/snd/control*
ConditionPathExists=/var/lib/alsa/asound.state
[Service]
Type=oneshot
RemainAfterExit=true
ExecStart=head -n30 /var/lib/alsa/asound.state
ExecStart=/usr/bin/alsactl -d restore -f /var/lib/alsa/asound.state
#ExecStop=/usr/bin/alsactl store
Here is the log:
-- Logs begin at Fri 2020-09-04 14:44:24 CEST, end at Sat 2020-09-19 16:03:01 CEST. --
Sep 19 15:57:48 pbp systemd[1]: Starting Save/Restore Sound Card State...
Sep 19 15:57:48 pbp head[761]: state.rockchipes8316c {
Sep 19 15:57:48 pbp head[761]: control.1 {
Sep 19 15:57:48 pbp head[761]: iface CARD
Sep 19 15:57:48 pbp head[761]: name 'Headphones Jack'
Sep 19 15:57:48 pbp head[761]: value false
Sep 19 15:57:48 pbp head[761]: comment {
Sep 19 15:57:48 pbp head[761]: access read
Sep 19 15:57:48 pbp head[761]: type BOOLEAN
Sep 19 15:57:48 pbp head[761]: count 1
Sep 19 15:57:48 pbp head[761]: }
Sep 19 15:57:48 pbp head[761]: }
Sep 19 15:57:48 pbp head[761]: control.2 {
Sep 19 15:57:48 pbp head[761]: iface MIXER
Sep 19 15:57:48 pbp head[761]: name 'Headphone Playback Volume'
Sep 19 15:57:48 pbp head[761]: value.0 3
Sep 19 15:57:48 pbp head[761]: value.1 3
Sep 19 15:57:48 pbp head[761]: comment {
Sep 19 15:57:48 pbp head[761]: access 'read write'
Sep 19 15:57:48 pbp head[761]: type INTEGER
Sep 19 15:57:48 pbp head[761]: count 2
Sep 19 15:57:48 pbp head[761]: range '0 - 3'
Sep 19 15:57:48 pbp head[761]: dbmin -4800
Sep 19 15:57:48 pbp head[761]: dbmax 0
Sep 19 15:57:48 pbp head[761]: dbvalue.0 0
Sep 19 15:57:48 pbp head[761]: dbvalue.1 0
Sep 19 15:57:48 pbp head[761]: }
Sep 19 15:57:48 pbp head[761]: }
Sep 19 15:57:48 pbp head[761]: control.3 {
Sep 19 15:57:48 pbp head[761]: iface MIXER
Sep 19 15:57:48 pbp head[761]: name 'Headphone Mixer Volume'
Sep 19 15:57:48 pbp systemd[1]: Finished Save/Restore Sound Card State.
Here you can see that the value is 3 as intended.
I also tested that the command successfully executes, at some point I added a command to store the state and display it and the value was 3. However at startup the value is 0. If I launch sudo alsactl restore it will be set up to 3 but I don’t want to launch this at each startup.
I also wanted to make sure that alsactl is not called after this, so I replaced /usr/bin/alsactl with a script that logs every call (alsactl.save is the original command):
#!/bin/bash
date >> /home/louisabraham/alsactl.log
whoami >> /home/louisabraham/alsactl.log
echo "$@" >> /home/louisabraham/alsactl.log
echo >> /home/louisabraham/alsactl.log
head /var/lib/alsa/asound.state -n20 >> /home/louisabraham/alsactl.log
echo >> /home/louisabraham/alsactl.log
/usr/bin/alsactl.save -d "$@" 2>> /home/louisabraham/alsactl.log
echo >> /home/louisabraham/alsactl.log
The output is the following:
Sat Sep 19 16:43:27 CEST 2020
root
restore 0
state.rockchipes8316c {
control.1 {
iface CARD
name 'Headphones Jack'
value false
comment {
access read
type BOOLEAN
count 1
}
}
control.2 {
iface MIXER
name 'Headphone Playback Volume'
value.0 3
value.1 3
comment {
access 'read write'
type INTEGER
count 2
/usr/bin/alsactl.save: set_controls:1479: device='hw:0', doit=0
/usr/bin/alsactl.save: set_controls:1491: card-info-id: 'rockchipes8316c'
/usr/bin/alsactl.save: set_controls:1517: maxnumid=37
/usr/bin/alsactl.save: set_controls:1535: result code: 0
/usr/bin/alsactl.save: set_controls:1479: device='hw:0', doit=1
/usr/bin/alsactl.save: set_controls:1491: card-info-id: 'rockchipes8316c'
/usr/bin/alsactl.save: set_controls:1517: maxnumid=37
/usr/bin/alsactl.save: set_controls:1535: result code: 0
Sat Sep 19 04:45:07 PM CEST 2020
root
-d restore -f /var/lib/alsa/asound.state
state.rockchipes8316c {
control.1 {
iface CARD
name 'Headphones Jack'
value false
comment {
access read
type BOOLEAN
count 1
}
}
control.2 {
iface MIXER
name 'Headphone Playback Volume'
value.0 3
value.1 3
comment {
access 'read write'
type INTEGER
count 2
/usr/bin/alsactl.save: set_controls:1479: device='hw:0', doit=0
/usr/bin/alsactl.save: set_controls:1491: card-info-id: 'rockchipes8316c'
/usr/bin/alsactl.save: set_controls:1517: maxnumid=37
/usr/bin/alsactl.save: set_controls:1535: result code: 0
/usr/bin/alsactl.save: set_controls:1479: device='hw:0', doit=1
/usr/bin/alsactl.save: set_controls:1491: card-info-id: 'rockchipes8316c'
/usr/bin/alsactl.save: set_controls:1517: maxnumid=37
/usr/bin/alsactl.save: set_controls:1535: result code: 0
Apparently, alsactl restore 0 is called (I don’t know why) then alsactl restore is called by the service and not called after that. I have spent hour trying to solve this (eg with autostart scripts) but nothing worked and I’m totally lost!