lost control of sound with KDE 4.8 upgrade

English Multimedia
1

I upgraded this 11.4 PC from KDE 4.7.4 to 4.8.00. Since then I cannot access pavucontrol (see here for the reason why I need it). It’s GUI loads but a second little window displays “Unable to connect: Connection refused”

I’ve rechecked all my MM setups using the mmcheck 2.35 script and all is OK (ex. no Totem)

aplay -l results are unchanged since I first checked over six months ago.

# uname -a
Linux X205 2.6.37.6-0.11-desktop #1 SMP PREEMPT 2011-12-19 23:39:38 +0100 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

~> aplay -l
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: Intel [HDA Intel], device 0: ALC268 Analog [ALC268 Analog]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: Intel [HDA Intel], device 1: ALC268 Digital [ALC268 Digital]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: Intel [HDA Intel], device 3: ALC268 Digital [ALC268 Digital]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

~> alsamixer
ALSA lib pulse.c:229:(pulse_connect) PulseAudio: Unable to connect: Connection refused

 cannot open mixer: Connection refused

speaker-test -t wav -c 2 -D plughw:0

speakers working OK

Any suggestions on how to diagnose further / and or resolve this?

2

Sorry for the incomplete post above. I got called away before I could finish. To Continue:

Alsa info link: http://www.alsa-project.org/db/?f=17e1bf08ceed293c4f9161a42cdb9cadda21dffe

Missing link to “here” in previous post: here

3

Updated all Packman files from YAST using “Switch system packages” option. No change in behavior.

Pavucontrol still produces error described in post above

~> alsamixer
ALSA lib pulse.c:229:(pulse_connect) PulseAudio: Unable to connect: Connection refused


cannot open mixer: Connection refused



~> aplay -L
null
    Discard all samples (playback) or generate zero samples (capture)
front:CARD=Intel,DEV=0
    HDA Intel, ALC268 Analog
    Front speakers
surround40:CARD=Intel,DEV=0
    HDA Intel, ALC268 Analog
    4.0 Surround output to Front and Rear speakers
surround41:CARD=Intel,DEV=0
    HDA Intel, ALC268 Analog
    4.1 Surround output to Front, Rear and Subwoofer speakers
surround50:CARD=Intel,DEV=0
    HDA Intel, ALC268 Analog
    5.0 Surround output to Front, Center and Rear speakers
surround51:CARD=Intel,DEV=0
    HDA Intel, ALC268 Analog
    5.1 Surround output to Front, Center, Rear and Subwoofer speakers
surround71:CARD=Intel,DEV=0
    HDA Intel, ALC268 Analog
    7.1 Surround output to Front, Center, Side, Rear and Woofer speakers
iec958:CARD=Intel,DEV=0
    HDA Intel, ALC268 Digital
    IEC958 (S/PDIF) Digital Audio Output
hdmi:CARD=Intel,DEV=0
    HDA Intel, ALC268 Digital
    HDMI Audio Output



~> kmix
QDBusConnection: session D-Bus connection created before QCoreApplication. Application may misbehave.
QDBusConnection: session D-Bus connection created before QCoreApplication. Application may misbehave.



~> pulseaudio
E: module.c: Failed to load  module "module-alsa-sink" (argument: "device=hw:0,3"): initialization failed.
E: main.c: Module load failed.
E: main.c: Failed to initialize daemon.


New alsa-info.sh files is at http://www.alsa-project.org/db/?f=9fec96c25e2946dfc952482169fade1ae0f10af1

Note: a Google search yielded numerous suggestions to update Pavucontrol. Yast reports that I have the latest available version (0.9.10-9.1)

4

I tried everything I could think of without any success, and none of the 81 other folks who’ve viewed this post have any suggestions either.

Furthermore, I began to find the exact symptoms of the failure weren’t always reliably reproduceable, so I opted to start over. I hadn’t planned on going to 12.1 yet, but tried it out with a Thumb drive with the Live CD image loaded with ImageWriter. It was really impressive, so I wiped out the / partition and loaded 12.1. I won’t add anything further to this thread unless the same problem reappears.

5

More troubles so I started a fresh post here.

6

I’ve found the source of the problem and a workaround that’s simple and easy. Go to this thread and look at post # 13. If you want the gory details go to # 11.