Comment 20 for bug 519066

@David Henningsson:

1. I had installed those, and indeed today they were updated by Update Manager (which prompted me to check back here).

2. I found the same things as Gargoulf, so rebooted into Recovery Mode and dropped into a root command prompt, where the commands worked. (The machine paused for a second after the reconfig command, so I assume it was doing it -- are these the Linux equivalent of hardware pokes?)

Rebooting shows that nothing has changed:

System / Preferences / Sound / Input / Connector still shows the same four options:
  Microphone 1 / Microphone
  Microphone 1 / Line-In
  Microphone 2 / Microphone
  Microphone 2 / Line-In
and selecting any of them does not respond to the inbuilt mic.

From the terminal, 'alsamixer' gives a whole lot of information (none of which helps):

Under F4 Capture it has Front Mic, Mic, Capture and Capture 1. Putting the gain to full on all of them doesn't help. Options for Input Source and Input Source 1 are Front Mic and Mic. Switching between them on either doesn't help.

Under F2 System information I get these (apologies for the format -- I'm cutting and pasting from the terminal-mode graphics):

│ │▒▒│ ┌────────────────── /proc/asound/version ───────────────────┐ │
│ │▒▒│ │Advanced Linux Sound Architecture Driver Version 1.0.23. │ │
│ │▒▒│ │Compiled on Aug 13 2010 for kernel 2.6.32-24-generic (SMP).│ │
│ │▒▒│ └───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ │

│ │▒▒│ ┌──────────────── /proc/asound/cards ────────────────┐ │
│ │▒▒│ │ 0 [Intel ]: HDA-Intel - HDA Intel │ │
│ │▒▒│ │ HDA Intel at 0xf6ffc000 irq 40│ │
│ │▒▒│ └────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ │

│ │▒▒│ │▒▒│ ┌─────── /proc/asound/devices ───────┐ │
│ │▒▒│ │▒▒│ │ 2: : timer │ │
│ │▒▒│ │▒▒│ │ 3: : sequencer │ │
│ │▒▒│ │▒▒│ │ 4: [ 0- 1]: digital audio playback│ │
│ │▒▒│ │▒▒│ │ 5: [ 0- 0]: digital audio playback│ │
│ │▒▒│ │▒▒│ │ 6: [ 0- 0]: digital audio capture │ │
│ │▒▒│ │▒▒│ │ 7: [ 0- 0]: hardware dependent │ │
│ │▒▒│ │▒▒│ │ 8: [ 0] : control │ │
│ │▒▒│ │▒▒│ └────────────────────────────────────┘ │
││ │▒▒│ │▒▒│ ┌ /proc/asound/oss/devices ┐ │
│ │▒▒│ │▒▒│ │ 0: [0- 0]: mixer │ │
│ │▒▒│ │▒▒│ │ 1: : sequencer │ │
│ │▒▒│ │▒▒│ │ 3: [0- 0]: digital audio│ │
│ │▒▒│ │▒▒│ │ 4: [0- 0]: digital audio│ │
│ │▒▒│ │▒▒│ │ 8: : sequencer │ │
│ │▒▒│ │▒▒│ │ 12: [0- 1]: digital audio│ │
│ │▒▒│ │▒▒│ └──────────────────────────┘ │

│ │▒▒│ ┌───────────── /proc/asound/timers ─────────────┐ │
│ │▒▒│ │G0: system timer : 10000.000us (10000000 ticks)│ │
│ │▒▒│ │P0-0-0: PCM playback 0-0-0 : SLAVE │ │
│ │▒▒│ │P0-0-1: PCM capture 0-0-1 : SLAVE │ │
│ │▒▒│ │P0-0-3: PCM capture 0-0-3 : SLAVE │ │
│ │▒▒│ │P0-1-0: PCM playback 0-1-0 : SLAVE │ │
│ │▒▒│ └───────────────────────────────────────────────┘ │

│ │▒▒│ ┌─────────────────────── /proc/asound/pcm ────────────────────────┐ │
│ │▒▒│ │00-00: STAC92xx Analog : STAC92xx Analog : playback 1 : capture 2│ │
│ │▒▒│ │00-01: STAC92xx Digital : STAC92xx Digital : playback 1 │ │
│ │▒▒│ └─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ │

Any help greatly appreciated.

John