pulseaudio doesn't remember last volume, sets to 0 every boot

Could you please try the following, note that this is only if you run pulseaudio in your user session, not system wide:

1. Remove all pulseaudio related files from your home directory, so .pulse_cookie and .pulse/* leave the .pulse directory in tact for the next step.
2. Create /home/your-username/.pulse/client.conf and add the following line to it:
autospawn = no

This is so that when we kill pulseaudio, it won't start right back up again when we don't want it to.
3. Kill pulseaudio with "pulseaudio -k"
4. Reset your alsa volume settings with the following command: "sudo /etc/init.d/alsa-utils reset". You will be asked for your password due to using the sudo command.
 5. Start pulseaudio again with "start-pulseaudio-x11".
6. Check the alsa mixer again, and report back as to whether your volume levels are reset to 0.

If you have any questions as to the above steps, please let me know also.

 affects ubuntu/pulseaudio
 status incomplete

Worked for me! Thanks.

Luke: the volumes are now fine. Thanks. I will have to see if this helps in the long run, though.

On the next reboot, it was still messed up. I didn't try executing the commands again yet.

Problems came back also for me. It's quite odd, I play songs with Xmms and after each song sound volumes are changing. First time I noticed the problem was when I played video on Xine and sound was gone everytime.

jarteq: I also have the same problems using audacious2.

The volume is either out of sync or reduces on each new song.

It's funny because alsa and oss worked well all the time. The new audio system is getting a little carried away with complexity?

Same here for me.

Yeah, still have the issue. :(

Yeah, still have the issue after each reboot, even on my Mythbuntu 9.10 alpha machine, which is very frustrating. :( Luke, how do we fix this issue permanently?

I stopped using pulseaudio and got rid of the issue. I set other sound managers to be primary.

Similar is happening here on a Dell Latitude D-820 running Kubuntu Karmic Koala up-to-date (as today). Really annoying, after every reboot the PCM value is down to zero, and I have to manually bring it up so that I can listen something. Interestingly, I do not have the issue that the volume changes between playing songs.

 * PulseAudio configured for per-user sessions
Linux dell 2.6.31-11-generic #36-Ubuntu SMP Fri Sep 25 06:37:23 UTC 2009 x86_64 GNU/Linux

Luke, could you have a look to the report ? Thanks.

I have this problem too (in Karmic RC), however it doesn't happen to me on every boot... Do you use Automatic login? because I deactivated automatic login (in GDM) and i don't have this problem anymore... I have one little question...

- Does alsa-utils starts before or after X Window System start?

If it starts after... is there any way to start alsa-utils before starting X Window System? I think this could be a solution for this bug.

I thought this because i noticed that if the mixer that comes with ubuntu by default start before alsa-utils, the master volume will reset to 0. I'm a non english native speaker, i hope that you will understand what i mean in this post.

mixer or pulseaudio, i don't know exactly what it is. ;)

I mean, wich one, not what ;)

I've posted this issue in #447395 too, because it randomly happens.

See http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=556971#12 for a fix

We already do this in Lucid.

Daniel T Chen wrote:
> We already do this in Lucid.

Good to know! Are you not zeroing in alsa, or you making sure pulseaudio
is killed before stopping alsa-utils?

Thanks,
Ludovico

This bug was fixed in the package pulseaudio - 1:0.9.22~0.9.21+341-g62bf-0ubuntu1

---------------
pulseaudio (1:0.9.22~0.9.21+341-g62bf-0ubuntu1) lucid; urgency=low

  * New snapshot based on stable-queue git branch (testing requested
    specifically by upstream)
    - LP: #164745, #173212, #201391, #204536, #207796, #210016, #221038,
    - LP: #226342, #230408, #236423, #237443, #250059, #269585, #274304,
    - LP: #274577, #275474, #277532, #277566, #277932, #278025, #280534,
    - LP: #283049, #286816, #287036, #292732, #298011, #298301, #300290,
    - LP: #302038, #311497, #311853, #324062, #339448, #344057, #348979,
    - LP: #350829, #356206, #367379, #367544, #369822, #371897, #374846,
    - LP: #375570, #381801, #399515, #402950, #403786, #408169, #409322,
    - LP: #409723, #410326, #410446, #417695, #417976, #419271, #421072,
    - LP: #422774, #423979, #424655, #425028, #427016, #431072, #432660,
    - LP: #437640, #437996, #442191, #443306, #443389, #446719, #449762,
    - LP: #455417, #461532, #464652, #483191, #497537, #503780
  * debian/patches/:
    + add: 0099-change-configure-git-version-tag.patch: Match released
           upstream 0.9.21 for shlibs and LIBPULSE_VERSION_INFO
    - drop: 0004-set-tsched0.patch (no longer relevant)
            0050-revert-pacmd-poll-argv.patch (no longer relevant)
            0056-dont-bail-on-sound-class-modem.patch (merged)
            0056-ignore-sound-class-modem.patch (merged)
            0058-Backport-4c793.patch (merged)
            0059-Backport-978d3.patch (merged)
            0060-fix-implicit-func-decl-cpu-arm.patch (merged)
            0061-Backport-c5fdb.patch (merged)
            0070-dont-bail-on-sound-class-modem-devs.patch (merged)
    + refresh: 0001-change-resample-and-buffering.patch
               0090-disable-flat-volumes.patch
               0091-dont-load-cork-music-on-phone.patch
               0057-load-module-x11-bell.patch
 -- Daniel T Chen <email address hidden> Thu, 14 Jan 2010 20:33:05 -0500

Is there a PPA those of us in Karmic can be testing for all the fixes in 9.22?

I do not have the bug any more (I updated to Jaunty and lately to lucid). Good luck with old distros.

Juanma.

No problem with Lucid.

Richard