Okay, so this has been bugging me for a while now, but I'm not sure how to fix it, or to troubleshoot it further. Maybe somebody here can help.
There are two issues, and they may or may not be related. I'm currently on F29, but it happened before I upgraded, too.
1. In gdm, the volume indicator always indicates the output device is Headphones, even when headphones aren't plugged in. gdm doesn't make a lot of noise to debug before logging in, so I'm not sure if it's trying to play through the wrong device, or if it's a UI problem.
2. When I log in (I'm using Wayland), everything works fine for about 10 seconds. After that, the volume is automatically muted and I have to manually unmute it again (even if I've previously muted and unmuted it before it reaches 10 seconds).
I've tried every knob I can find in the gnome settings, pavucontrol, and even reset the entire ~/.config/pulse directory and rebooted. Nothing works.
I have no idea what's going on. Can anybody suggest a fix or help me identify the problem?
On Sun, Dec 2, 2018 at 1:53 AM Christopher ctubbsii@fedoraproject.org wrote:
Okay, so this has been bugging me for a while now, but I'm not sure how to fix it, or to troubleshoot it further. Maybe somebody here can help.
There are two issues, and they may or may not be related. I'm currently on F29, but it happened before I upgraded, too.
- In gdm, the volume indicator always indicates the output device is
Headphones, even when headphones aren't plugged in. gdm doesn't make a lot of noise to debug before logging in, so I'm not sure if it's trying to play through the wrong device, or if it's a UI problem.
- When I log in (I'm using Wayland), everything works fine for about
10 seconds. After that, the volume is automatically muted and I have to manually unmute it again (even if I've previously muted and unmuted it before it reaches 10 seconds).
I've tried every knob I can find in the gnome settings, pavucontrol, and even reset the entire ~/.config/pulse directory and rebooted. Nothing works.
I have no idea what's going on. Can anybody suggest a fix or help me identify the problem?
I guess nobody else has seen these problems. :)
On Sun, 9 Dec 2018 01:07:28 -0500 Christopher ctubbsii@fedoraproject.org wrote:
On Sun, Dec 2, 2018 at 1:53 AM Christopher ctubbsii@fedoraproject.org wrote:
- In gdm, the volume indicator always indicates the output device
is Headphones, even when headphones aren't plugged in. gdm doesn't make a lot of noise to debug before logging in, so I'm not sure if it's trying to play through the wrong device, or if it's a UI problem.
- When I log in (I'm using Wayland), everything works fine for
about 10 seconds. After that, the volume is automatically muted and I have to manually unmute it again (even if I've previously muted and unmuted it before it reaches 10 seconds).
I've tried every knob I can find in the gnome settings, pavucontrol, and even reset the entire ~/.config/pulse directory and rebooted. Nothing works.
I have no idea what's going on. Can anybody suggest a fix or help me identify the problem?
I guess nobody else has seen these problems. :)
This sounds like a bug, but could be a misconfiguration.
As you say, I don't have the problem. If you switch to a console (Ctrl-Alt-[F2-F6]), and use the simple program aplay from alsa to play a .wav file, does it play? You can switch back to the gui, usually, with Ctrl-Alt-F1.
If you run journalctl -r after a start and then mute, are there error messages related to sound?
What does aplay -lv show for sound devices? Are you using the correct device as the default?
What does alsamixer -c 0 show for settings in alsa? This is the first sound device, if the default is another device use that number instead. The leftmost bar should be turned on and set at the border of the red.
If you open audacity, what does it show for sound device options? What is its default sound device? If you import an audio file into audacity, does it play?
If you try to play an audio file with audacious, does it play? Are there error messages?
Finally, you sound like you are familiar with pavucontrol, have you set the correct device as the default sound device?
Don't know if these will help, just some things to try that will give you more information.
On Sun, Dec 9, 2018 at 2:34 PM stan stanl-fedorauser@vfemail.net wrote:
On Sun, 9 Dec 2018 01:07:28 -0500 Christopher ctubbsii@fedoraproject.org wrote:
On Sun, Dec 2, 2018 at 1:53 AM Christopher ctubbsii@fedoraproject.org wrote:
- In gdm, the volume indicator always indicates the output device
is Headphones, even when headphones aren't plugged in. gdm doesn't make a lot of noise to debug before logging in, so I'm not sure if it's trying to play through the wrong device, or if it's a UI problem.
- When I log in (I'm using Wayland), everything works fine for
about 10 seconds. After that, the volume is automatically muted and I have to manually unmute it again (even if I've previously muted and unmuted it before it reaches 10 seconds).
I've tried every knob I can find in the gnome settings, pavucontrol, and even reset the entire ~/.config/pulse directory and rebooted. Nothing works.
I have no idea what's going on. Can anybody suggest a fix or help me identify the problem?
I guess nobody else has seen these problems. :)
This sounds like a bug, but could be a misconfiguration.
As you say, I don't have the problem. If you switch to a console (Ctrl-Alt-[F2-F6]), and use the simple program aplay from alsa to play a .wav file, does it play? You can switch back to the gui, usually, with Ctrl-Alt-F1.
Playback worked fine that way. I guess that means alsa is configured fine? The problem could be pulseaudio still.
If you run journalctl -r after a start and then mute, are there error messages related to sound?
I did quite a bit of examining these logs. It looked like at exactly 10 seconds after login, a systemd task was executed to complete shutting down gdm. I see "Stopping Sound Service." message, but it didn't seem to be an error... just part of the normal systemd shutdown of /run/user/42 D-Bus and related services. This hinted at looking more at gdm.
What does aplay -lv show for sound devices? Are you using the correct device as the default?
Everything looks correct to me. One analog device, and a few HDMI channels. Analog output is default and works fine. Only potential problem is that HDMI is card 0, and analog is card 1, but that doesn't seem to be a problem.
What does alsamixer -c 0 show for settings in alsa? This is the first sound device, if the default is another device use that number instead. The leftmost bar should be turned on and set at the border of the red.
No issues with alsamixer settings. Everything is on as expected, and all volume controls seem to affect the volume correctly.
If you open audacity, what does it show for sound device options? What is its default sound device? If you import an audio file into audacity, does it play?
I don't normally use it. Can't figure out how to view name of the default device... it just calls it "default" and host is ALSA. Importing and playback works fine.
If you try to play an audio file with audacious, does it play? Are there error messages?
Did not try. Not installed. Playback seems fine everywhere else, so I didn't think this was worth installing to investigate.
Finally, you sound like you are familiar with pavucontrol, have you set the correct device as the default sound device?
Yeah, that's all configured correctly, as far as I can tell.
Don't know if these will help, just some things to try that will give you more information.
I appreciate the suggestions. Unfortunately most of that did not yield any useful insight into the problem.
However, I did eventually solve the problem:
Based on the suggestion to examine the journalctl output, and because I already knew that gdm was involved with the first issue, I decided to reset all of /var/lib/gdm (deleting any /var/lib/gdm/{.cache,.config,.local}). That seemed to have fixed the gdm issue... which wasn't too surprising. However, it also fixed the second issue, which was very surprising. It seems that my intuition that these might be related was correct. However, I still don't understand how gdm configuration could possibly affect my user's configuration. This seems to have something to do with systemd handing off gdm to my Gnome 3/Wayland user session, but I do not understand enough about this process to explain why, after exactly 10 seconds after logging in, the volume was muted in my session because of a configuration error somewhere in gdm's home directory. It makes no sense to me. Maybe somebody else might be able to figure out what happened.
Regardless, it's fixed now, and I thank you for your assistance. :)
-
Christopher -
stan