ALSA not working, can't be started with systemd

ParanoidAndroid · 2012-10-27 05:14:20

I have alsa and pulseaudio installed and configured properly. After a system upgrade, alsa ceased to work. Any attempts to load it manually through systemd resulted in an error "Unit alsa.service failed to load: No such file or directory."

I reinstalled alsa-utils, which should contain the necessary service files for systemd. pulseaudio works perfectly, but alsa won't recognize any sound cards and pulseaudio registers a dummy output. Can anyone explain how to fix this? my card is an HDA Intel card, realtek drivers.

65kid · 2012-10-27 10:55:54

there is no alsa.service, there is only alsa-store.service and alsa-restore.service which are both enabled by default but which you don't actually need if you use PulseAudio (meaning you could actually uninstall alsa-utils).

I assume this is a permission problem. You need to be in a proper logind or ConsoleKit session to access your sound devices. How do you login? Also check the output of

loginctl show-session $XDG_SESSION_ID

also check if "aplay -l" shows soundcards when run as root.

pgarner · 2012-10-27 14:52:00

This broke for me this morning too. Solution was add the user to the audio group.
usermod -aG audio username
Somehow it never mattered before.

65kid · 2012-10-27 14:53:28

this is not a solution but a workaround. If your session is properly set up you don't need the audio group.

pgarner · 2012-11-01 05:07:36

Ah, OK.
The problem seems to have been that I'd switched to systemd, but not updated gdm-old. There are updates to the display manager to do with the ConsoleKit/systemd-logind thing.
For want of a pointer, it's all in the wiki
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Systemd

Last edited by pgarner (2012-11-01 05:30:38)

ParanoidAndroid · 2012-11-03 22:05:53

problem solved! you were right 65kid, it was a permissions problem.

This all started with me trying to configure my joystick. I restarted X every time I altered the config files I was using, but in doing so I quit my authorized login, thus denying me access to the soundcard.

I finally got the dang thing set up properly and rebooted, and low and behold! my audio is working again. it took me a bit of digging to realize what had been happening, but I figured it out in the end.

I'll mark the thread as solved.

ParanoidAndroid · 2012-11-03 22:08:20

assuming, of course, I can figure out how to do that... I'm new to the forums and I can't for the life of me figure out how. This isn't the topic under discussion, but could one of you fine folks give a hint to a helpless newbie?

skunktrader · 2012-11-04 00:23:47

Edit your initial post and prepend [Solved] to the title

frumble · 2012-11-04 20:34:55

Adding the user to the audio group helped me too to get audio back – but @65kid said this is only a workaround? Could you please explain, what is the real solution? I just want to make everything right. My DE is KDE SC and I have just made a complete system upgrade so KDM should be aware of the recent ConsoleKit/logind change. I have absolutely no knowledge about systemd or this permission stuff, please help me.

Arch Linux

#1 2012-10-27 05:14:20

ALSA not working, can't be started with systemd

#2 2012-10-27 10:55:54

Re: ALSA not working, can't be started with systemd

#3 2012-10-27 14:52:00

Re: ALSA not working, can't be started with systemd

#4 2012-10-27 14:53:28

Re: ALSA not working, can't be started with systemd

#5 2012-11-01 05:07:36

Re: ALSA not working, can't be started with systemd

#6 2012-11-03 22:05:53

Re: ALSA not working, can't be started with systemd

#7 2012-11-03 22:08:20

Re: ALSA not working, can't be started with systemd

#8 2012-11-04 00:23:47

Re: ALSA not working, can't be started with systemd

#9 2012-11-04 20:34:55

Re: ALSA not working, can't be started with systemd

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