I have Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal) and the sound indicator in the panel sometimes breaks down. I assume it is probably because the sound system crashes or something.
When this happens, The sound indicator shows just three dashes instead of the current volume, I can't change the volume using the Volume Up/Volume Down keys on my keyboard, not can I change it using the slider that shows when I click on the sound indicator.
When I click on the sound indicator and then click on the "Sound preferences" in the popup menu, a message box appears, saying something like "Waiting for sound system to respond". I found that this is due to crashed pulseaudio (whatever that is) and I should type pulseaudio --start
to start it again. After I do that, I can open the sound preferences and adjust the volume from there, but I still can't change the volume using the multimedia keys on my keyboard, nor using the volume slider in the sound indicator.
So my questions:
- Is there a way to stop pulseaudio from crashing (assuming this is the cause for the indicator to break down)?
- If not, is there at least a way to restore the volume indicator after the pulseaudio system has been restarted, so the volume keyboard shortcuts and the slider work (maybe a way to restart the indicator itself)?