Alsamixer and amixer command not working

Hello!

I have no idea of why that happened, but I’ve used alsamixer command to change my ALSA sound card settings recently, but with no success. I did that some weeks ago and It worked.

I have no idea of what logs to put here, so if anything is required, ask me.

What may be causing that?

Thanks!

Did you change ALSA settings in alsamixer but the settings were not restored correctly when you rebooted system?

If that is the case, use this command to save ALSA settings after using alsamixer

sudo alsactl store

No, this is not my problem. I just can’t use alsamixer to change the settings, It shows me “the host is down”, returns and I can’t change anything.

Please post system information

inxi-Fazy

and ALSA information

sudo alsa.info.sh --upload

I’m sorry I don’t have that command on my system…

UPDATE: It’s here, and its called alsa-info.sh: http://alsa-project.org/db/?f=0c559cf95e8cc6b885804c808a1603e7d60ff955

inxi -Fazy reports this:

inxi -Fazy

System:
Kernel: 5.11.16-2-MANJARO x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 10.2.0
parameters: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-5.11-x86_64
root=UUID=b7b6829b-5b8c-415d-839a-746e7322d7d6 ro udev.log_priority=3
bootsplash.bootfile=/bootsplash-themes/inky/bootsplash
Desktop: KDE Plasma 5.21.4 tk: Qt 5.15.2 wm: kwin_x11 vt: 2 dm: SDDM
Distro: Manjaro Linux base: Arch Linux
Machine:
Type: Desktop Mobo: Gigabyte model: H310M DS2 v: x.x serial:
UEFI: American Megatrends v: F11 date: 09/18/2018
CPU:
Info: 6-Core model: Intel Core i7-8700 bits: 64 type: MT MCP arch: Kaby Lake
note: check family: 6 model-id: 9E (158) stepping: A (10) microcode: DE
cache: L2: 12 MiB
flags: avx avx2 lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 ssse3 vmx
bogomips: 76831
Speed: 1200 MHz min/max: 800/4600 MHz Core speeds (MHz): 1: 1200 2: 2481
3: 1200 4: 1200 5: 928 6: 1200 7: 2531 8: 1200 9: 2736 10: 1200 11: 1199
12: 1200
Vulnerabilities: Type: itlb_multihit status: KVM: VMX disabled
Type: l1tf
mitigation: PTE Inversion; VMX: conditional cache flushes, SMT vulnerable
Type: mds mitigation: Clear CPU buffers; SMT vulnerable
Type: meltdown mitigation: PTI
Type: spec_store_bypass
mitigation: Speculative Store Bypass disabled via prctl and seccomp
Type: spectre_v1
mitigation: usercopy/swapgs barriers and __user pointer sanitization
Type: spectre_v2 mitigation: Full generic retpoline, IBPB: conditional,
IBRS_FW, STIBP: conditional, RSB filling
Type: srbds mitigation: Microcode
Type: tsx_async_abort mitigation: Clear CPU buffers; SMT vulnerable
Graphics:
Device-1: NVIDIA GP107 [GeForce GTX 1050] vendor: Gigabyte driver: nvidia
v: 460.73.01 alternate: nouveau,nvidia_drm bus-ID: 01:00.0
chip-ID: 10de:1c81 class-ID: 0300
Device-2: Pixart Imaging GE 1.3 MP MiniCam Pro type: USB
driver: snd-usb-audio,uvcvideo bus-ID: 1-5:5 chip-ID: 093a:2700
class-ID: 0102
Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.11 compositor: kwin_x11 driver:
loaded: nvidia display-ID: :0 screens: 1
Screen-1: 0 s-res: 1920x1200 s-dpi: 93 s-size: 524x321mm (20.6x12.6")
s-diag: 615mm (24.2")
Monitor-1: DVI-D-0 res: 1920x1200 hz: 60 dpi: 94
size: 518x324mm (20.4x12.8") diag: 611mm (24.1")
OpenGL: renderer: GeForce GTX 1050/PCIe/SSE2 v: 4.6.0 NVIDIA 460.73.01
direct render: Yes
Audio:
Device-1: Intel Cannon Lake PCH cAVS vendor: Gigabyte driver: snd_hda_intel
v: kernel alternate: snd_soc_skl,snd_sof_pci bus-ID: 00:1f.3
chip-ID: 8086:a348 class-ID: 0403
Device-2: NVIDIA GP107GL High Definition Audio vendor: Gigabyte
driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel bus-ID: 01:00.1 chip-ID: 10de:0fb9
class-ID: 0403
Device-3: Pixart Imaging GE 1.3 MP MiniCam Pro type: USB
driver: snd-usb-audio,uvcvideo bus-ID: 1-5:5 chip-ID: 093a:2700
class-ID: 0102
Sound Server-1: ALSA v: k5.11.16-2-MANJARO running: yes
Sound Server-2: sndio v: N/A running: no
Sound Server-3: JACK v: 1.9.18 running: no
Sound Server-4: PulseAudio v: 14.2 running: yes
Sound Server-5: PipeWire v: 0.3.26 running: no
Network:
Device-1: Realtek RTL8812AE 802.11ac PCIe Wireless Network Adapter
driver: rtl8821ae v: kernel port: 4000 bus-ID: 02:00.0 chip-ID: 10ec:8812
class-ID: 0280
IF: wlp2s0 state: down mac:
Device-2: Realtek RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet
vendor: Gigabyte driver: r8169 v: kernel port: 3000 bus-ID: 03:00.0
chip-ID: 10ec:8168 class-ID: 0200
IF: enp3s0 state: up speed: 1000 Mbps duplex: full mac:
IF-ID-1: docker0 state: down mac:
Drives:
Local Storage: total: 3.4 TiB used: 547.82 GiB (15.7%)
SMART Message: Unable to run smartctl. Root privileges required.
ID-1: /dev/sda maj-min: 8:0 vendor: SanDisk model: SSD PLUS 240GB
size: 223.58 GiB block-size: physical: 512 B logical: 512 B speed: 6.0 Gb/s
rotation: SSD serial: rev: 00RL scheme: GPT
ID-2: /dev/sdb maj-min: 8:16 vendor: Seagate model: ST2000DM001-1CH164
size: 1.82 TiB block-size: physical: 4096 B logical: 512 B speed: 3.0 Gb/s
rotation: 7200 rpm serial: rev: CC29 scheme: MBR
ID-3: /dev/sdc maj-min: 8:32 vendor: Western Digital
model: WD5000BEVT-22A0RT0 size: 465.76 GiB block-size: physical: 512 B
logical: 512 B speed: 3.0 Gb/s rotation: 5400 rpm serial: rev: 1A01
scheme: MBR
ID-4: /dev/sdd maj-min: 8:48 type: USB vendor: Toshiba model: MQ04ABF100
size: 931.51 GiB block-size: physical: 4096 B logical: 512 B
rotation: 5400 rpm serial: scheme: GPT
SMART Message: Unknown USB bridge. Flash drive/Unsupported enclosure?
Partition:
ID-1: / raw-size: 220.58 GiB size: 216.61 GiB (98.20%)
used: 129.22 GiB (59.7%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda7 maj-min: 8:7
ID-2: /boot/efi raw-size: 488 MiB size: 487 MiB (99.80%)
used: 42.1 MiB (8.7%) fs: vfat dev: /dev/sda5 maj-min: 8:5
Swap:
Kernel: swappiness: 60 (default) cache-pressure: 100 (default)
ID-1: swap-1 type: partition size: 1.91 GiB used: 0 KiB (0.0%) priority: -2
dev: /dev/sda6 maj-min: 8:6
Sensors:
System Temperatures: cpu: 68.0 C mobo: 27.8 C gpu: nvidia temp: 58 C
Fan Speeds (RPM): N/A gpu: nvidia fan: 0%
Info:
Processes: 311 Uptime: 29m wakeups: 0 Memory: 15.57 GiB
used: 3.78 GiB (24.3%) Init: systemd v: 247 tool: systemctl Compilers:
gcc: 10.2.0 clang: 11.1.0 Packages: pacman: 1951 lib: 511 Shell: Bash
v: 5.1.0 running-in: konsole inxi: 3.3.04

There are no hardware scans from other users on linux-hardware.org for this motherboard, so I can’t find any similar Linux data for comparison
But audio codec ALC887-VD is fairly common for many motherboards and usually works well
(only one or two bug reports on Bugzilla for earlier versions of this codec)

The alsa-info data all appears to be as expected

The section !!Amixer output is showing the ALSA settings in text-format
this is the same data that should be shown in alsamixer in graphical format

If you were using just the basic command alsamixer the message “the host is down” might only relate to the default virtual controls for PulseAudio

Try checking only the onboard audio card (card 0)

alsamixer -c0 --view=All

if that does not show ALSA controls correctly, check amixer can still see the card
(if alsa-info scan can find the ALSA settings this command should find them too)

amixer -c0

i used alsamixer -c0 and everything seems to be working well, just when I change to the default board It freezes. Apparently a pulseaudio problem? The default board seems to be pulseaudio’s one.

Do you have package pulseaudio-alsa installed to create the default Pulseaudio controls in ALSA?

/etc/alsa/conf.d/99-pulseaudio-default.conf

Default to PulseAudio

pcm.!default {
type pulse
fallback “sysdefault”
hint {
show on
description “Default ALSA Output (currently PulseAudio Sound Server)”
}
}

ctl.!default {
type pulse
fallback “sysdefault”
}

If that is OK then check Pulseaudio socket and service for error messages

systemctl --user -l --no-pager status pulseaudio*

No idea of how this happened, but pulseaudio-alsa was absent.

Installed and now alsamixer is working fine. Thanks!

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