3

Problem: I can't play any sounds.

In Settings -> Sound -> Output there is no device listed.

System: Ubuntu 18.04. This is my laptop, only one user ever connected

Attempts

I've tried lots of forums, threads, ideas, nothing worked.

(1) I've tried

$ aplay -l 

returns the devices correctly

(2) I've uninstalled pulseaudio and reinstalled with no success.

(3) To check the groups

$ sudo groups <myuser>

which returns

sudo audio pulse chrome-remote-desktop

(4) If I try to kill it using

$ pulseaudio -k

I get

E: [pulseaudio] main.c: Failed to kill daemon. No such process

(5) IF I try to start pulseaudio

$ pulseaudio --start

then I get

E: [pulseaudio] main.c: Daemon startup failed.

What am I missing? How can I grant the user the access to audio device?

4 Answers 4

4

One thing that helped out is this link: No audio on Ubuntu 18.04 which says to

$ sudo apt-get install pavucontrol
$ pavucontrol

Also I removed then reinstall the pulse audio as

$ sudo apt-get install pulseaudio

With the steps above at least I see my hardware in the Sound settings (output) So it is a step forward. Sound is still muted, but I am working on that.

2

Check if the service is running:

systemctl --full --all --user status pulseaudio

Make sure to carefully check the output of the command above. You may see a potential cause if you see things like:

Nov 26 12:52:13 pc pulseaudio[2462]: No UCM verb is valid for hw:0
Nov 26 12:52:13 pc pulseaudio[2462]: No UCM verb is valid for hw:2

If that failed to show the cause, start by checking the device and other related info:

sudo lshw -C sound
sudo lspci
alsa-info
sudo fuser -v /dev/snd/*
aplay -l
aplay -lL
sudo apt -y install inxi && inxi -SMA
ls /sys/class/sound  # Check if the card* file numbers match the card* from aplay -l and fuser -v outputs.

You may need to:

systemctl --user enable pulseaudio
export USERI=$(whoami) && sudo addgroup ${USERI} pulse

And you could also consider doing any of these:

sudo alsa force-reload
sudo apt purge alsa-base pulseaudio && sudo apt install alsa-base pulseaudio

Then try reboot.

1

Upon reinstalling Audacity as a snap this useful tip was displayed:

sudo snap connect audacity:alsa

Worked without rebooting.

1
  • It kind of worked. Altho it turned out that pulse via alsa, especially bluetooth devices are not supported by some snap's. Snaps have to be specifically built to support this. In my case Mixxx snap is therefore unusable. Jan 18 at 19:09
0

This fixed it for me:

systemctl --user restart pulseaudio

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