Fn+F4 (speaker mute) doesn't work in chroot

ARM Technical Assistance
1

This happens also with “aplay -D sysdefault” on host, but the same command works fine on Armbian. The device is a Pinebook Pro. I’ve been trying to fix this for weeks now.

Here’s what I know:

  • the issue is with the host OS as the audio from the same chroot can be muted on Armbian (XFCE) but not on Manjaro (tried KDE Plasma and XFCE)
  • tried both “sudo chroot” and “schroot -c” with same results
  • Armbian XFCE uses “xfce4-pulseaudio-plugin” to handle volume control (Fn keys) while Manjaro KDE Plasma uses “plasma-pa”
  • Armbian lists more devices with “aplay -L” because of “libasound2-plugins” package (“alsa-plugins” on Manjaro)

Any help is much appreciated!

2

So did you install alsa-plugins and power cycle to see if that helped?
I don’t know what magic Armbian invokes for this if any. And to be honest, I can’t see much of a use-case outside your niche.

3

Yes and no. I installed alsa-plugins (+shutdown) and no, it didn’t help. I would like to fix this, but it’s hard to debug since it’s a problem with the host OS.

4

Update:

Removing the following lines

SectionDevice."Speaker" {
	Comment "Speaker"

	ConflictingDevice [
		"Headphones"
	]

	EnableSequence [
		cset "name='Playback Polarity' 'R Invert'"
		cset "name='Speaker Switch' on"
	]

	DisableSequence [
		cset "name='Speaker Switch' off"
	]

	Value {
		PlaybackPriority 100
		PlaybackPCM "hw:${CardId}"
		PlaybackMixerElem "Headphone Mixer"
		PlaybackMasterElem "DAC"
	}
}

in /usr/share/alsa/ucm2/Rockchip/es8316/HiFi.conf and restarting pipewire using “systemctl --user restart pipewire” enables Fn+F4 on Pinebook Pro to work, but it breaks volume and alsactl/alsaucm

Upstream PR: https://github.com/alsa-project/alsa-ucm-conf/pull/112

How to reproduce:

sudo pacman -S arch-install-scripts schroot
mkdir ~/chroot
sudo pacstrap ~/chroot alsa-utils
echo -e "[manjaro]\ntype=directory\ndirectory=$HOME/chroot\nusers=$USER\nprofile=desktop\npreserve-environment=true"|sudo tee /etc/schroot/chroot.d/manjaro.conf
sed -i /^networks$/s/^/#/ /etc/schroot/desktop/nssdatabases
curl -LO https://archive.org/download/heart-of-darkness-1998-eng.w/HOD_GB.iso/hodsuccess.wav
schroot -c manjaro aplay hodsuccess.wav	# press Fn+F4 while the audio is playing

Undo

sudo pacman -Rs arch-install-scripts schroot
sudo rm -r ~/chroot /etc/schroot/chroot.d/manjaro.conf hodsuccess.wav
5

Moving to Pinebook Pro: Speaker mute (Fn+F4) doesn't work in chroot · Issue #280 · alsa-project/alsa-ucm-conf · GitHub. Closing.