How to fix sound muted on startup in Ubuntu 9.10(Karmic)

This post was written by admin on December 4, 2009
Posted Under: General

I have installed Ubuntu Karmic on my machine for a period of time,and I need to re-configure my sound every-time I restart my machine because the sound was muted.Following is what I did to fix this problem.

Run this command in terminal:

sudo gedit /etc/init.d/alsa-utils

find out following section and add “#” to annotate:

mute_and_zero_level()
{
{ [ "$1" ] && [ "$CARDOPT" ] ; } || bugout
amixer $CARDOPT -q set “$1″ “0%” mute 2>&1 | filter_amixer_output || :
return 0
}

#unmute_and_set_level()
#{
# { [ "$2" ] && [ "$CARDOPT" ] ; } || bugout
# amixer $CARDOPT -q set “$1″ “$2″ unmute 2>&1 | filter_amixer_output || :
# return 0
#}

Close and save.

Tags: ubuntu 9.10

Reader Comments

Newbie here!
I wish your instructions where a little more specific.
I found the lines on the alsa-utils, Now what?
Add the # Where exactly?
send help sonhadorpr(at)gmail(dot)com

[Reply]

youdontneedit Reply:
January 12th, 2010 at 4:22 pm

Add # at the beginning of the lines indicated in the quotations in the explanation.

[Reply]

Written By Roberto O. Millán on December 26th, 2009 @ 11:19 pm

Think you meant to put # in front of the mute_and_zero_level() section, not as in your example with the #unmute_and_zero_level()

Just a little detail.
But it works, thanks!

[Reply]

Written By Math. on January 17th, 2010 @ 2:40 pm

Startup muted symptoms only started in Mar after upgrading to 9.10 in Jan. Thanks for this fix. Don’t understand any of what is being commented out, but it seems to be working for me too. Had NO idea how many initialization commands were actually being read!

[Reply]

Written By Roger T. Imai on April 20th, 2010 @ 5:16 pm