alsamixer: no such file or directory

Question

I am trying to setup a minimal system from the Ubuntu 14.04 netboot iso. I installed the system using defaults only (except partitioning). After the install was finished I restarted, edited sources.list to add extras and partners, fetched key for partners, updated apt and installed xorg slim alsa-base alsa-utils i3. After it was finished installing I added myself to audio group and rebooted. After the reboot I logged in with slim, did the first-run i3 config, did an apt-get update and apt-get dist-upgrade just for fun (of course nothing had changed) and verified that I was in the audio group with "groups". Then I type alsamixer and get cannot open mixer: no such file or directory

The system DOES sees the device. aplay -l produces:

**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 1: Set [USB Headphone Set], device 0: USB Audio [USB Audio]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

lsmod | grep ^snd produces:

snd_usb_audio 127638 0
snd_usbmidi_lib 24367 1 snd_usb_audio
snd_hwdep 13272 1 snd_usb_audio
snd_pcm 85501 1 snd_usb_audio
snd_page_alloc 14230 1 snd_pcm
snd_seq_midi 13132 0
snd_seq_midi_event 14475 1 snd_seq_midi
snd_rawmidi 25135 2 snd_usbmidi_lib,snd_seq_midi
snd_seq 55383 2 snd_seq_midi_event,snd_seq_midi
snd_seq_device 14137 3 snd_seq,snd_rawmidi,snd_seq_midi
snd_timer 28584 2 snd_pcm,snd_seq
snd 60871 9 snd_usb_audio,snd_hwdep,snd_timer,snd_pcm,snd_seq, snd_rawmidi,snd_usbmidi_lib,snd_seq_device,snd_seq _midi 

I tried this yesterday and installing pulseaudio fixed it but I don't want pulseaudio as this is a pretty old box and I am trying to conserve resources. Any help greatly appreciated. I have googled for a couple days trying, and now I'm here. I can see that I am not the first person to have this problem on here, but I have yet to see a solution. I have posted the same info in Ubuntu forums. Whoever provides a solution, I will share with the other.

Answer 1

I have found a solution for this problem.

Appearantly, ALSA did not like the USB sound device that I was using. It is one of the cheap $2 ones that look like a USB stick w/headphone jack. Either way, I attached an old SB Live! PCI card I had laying around, booted up the machine and alsamixer worked with no problem. I can switch between the 2 devices and the USB headphone thingy works just fine now.

So anyone that may read this with a similar problem: the device was the problem.

Answer 2

Alsa doesn't like only having USB audio and nothing else.

In /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf, comment out this line:

options snd-usb-audio index=-2