Some time ago there were 2 updates for the pulseaudio: one removed it and the other reintroduced it. After the second one after every boot I have to go to Yast to manually change volume for the headphones if I want to use them. Is there a way to fix this?
Get pavulcontrol it should deal with it.
Note also you may need to zap some files in your home. in the ~/.pulse and ~/.conf/pulse directories. Some time they get corrupted with version changes (reboot after)
Installed pavucontrol, deleted both directories - headphones are still muted on login.
You installed pavulcontrol but did you run it and adjust the settings??
I ran it, but there is no default option to control headphones. The only way to enable sound in headphones using pavucontrol is to switch from Analog Surround 5.1 output to Analog Stereo output in configuration tab and then choose headphones in Output Devices. When I switch back to 5.1 (or to Line Out instead of headphones) headphones are muted again. Also I noticed during that experiments that my subwoofer in 5.1 mode is muted as well (in stereo mode it works), however in Yast its volume bar is set to 100% when headphones volume explicitly set to 0%.