So here's a partial fix, a script that resets the volume on log-in.
- In a terminal, run pactl list sinks to get a list of output devices controlled by the PulseAudio driver. Note the device number for the device that handles your speakers. (In my case, the only entry is device #1.)
- Using your favorite text editor, create a script file (mine is named resetVolume.sh) in a directory of your choice (~/Scripts for me). Putting the script somewhere in your home directory should keep it safe from being lost during system upgrades. Put the following two lines of code in the script file:Change 1 to whatever device number you obtained in the first step and 45% to whatever volume setting you want. Note that the pactl command seems to suffer some rounding errors when it does volume changes; this script actually sets my volume to 44%, according to the panel audio control applet.
#!/bin/sh pactl set-sink-volume 1 45%
- In a terminal, run chmod +x ~/Scripts/resetVolume.sh (changing the path and file name as appropriate) to make the script executable.
- Test the script: use the panel audio applet (or whatever mechanism you normally use to control volume) to crank the master volume up or down, then run the script in a terminal and verify the volume resets correctly.
- Find Startup Applications in the system menu (the easiest way is to search for it by name) and run it. Click the Add button and create an entry for the script.
- Test once more by screwing with the volume setting and then logging out and back in.
UPDATE: I apparently declared victory prematurely. The script seems to run fairly reliably when I log out and log back in, but if I shutdown and restart, or reboot, it does not work. I switched from the pactl command to the pacmd command, but that did not help. I added a line 'sudo alsactl store' to reset the stored volume (and added the script to the sudoers file), but that did not help. I linked the script from /etc/rc0.d and from /etc/rc6.d, so that it would run when shutting down or rebooting, and confirmed that the script did indeed run; it just did not reset the stored volume. (I named it both K99resetVolume, so that it would run late in the shutdown sequence, and K00resetVolume, so that it would run early, but no joy either way.) My suspicion (and it's just a suspicion) is that there's a timing issue, with the script perhaps failing because alsa and/or pulse-audio is not running at the time the script executes. In any event, I'm at a loss how to get it to run properly.
UPDATE #2: Another day, another failure. This time I symlinked the script in /etc/X11/Xsession.d, so that the script would run when the X system started after login. I gave it a name starting with "99z", which I think would make it the last script to run during the X start. Once again, the script ran but failed to affect the audio volume.
[SOLVED] UPDATE #3: I fixed this a while back and apparently forgot to update this post. The script that works for me is as follows:
#!/bin/sh # # There seems to be some inconsistency about whether the sound card # is sink 0 or sink 1, so hit them both just to be safe. # pacmd set-sink-volume 0 27500 pacmd set-sink-volume 1 27500 sudo alsactl store
It will generate a harmless warning message because one of the two sinks (0, 1) will not exist when the script runs.
Thanks for this, I will give it a try.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I still have a question though: To what volume do the values (27500) in your last script correspondent? Since you wrote that your preferred volume ist 45% and I want to set mine to 20%.
Thank you.
As best I can tell, the pacmd command does not accept percentages for the volume value, and instead expects a positive 16 bit integer value (0 to 65535). The 27500 I use sets the volume to either 41% or 42%, depending on the alignment of the moon and the stars. (27500/65535 = 0.4196..., which the volume applet usually rounds to 42% but today is rounding to 41%.) Try 13108 +/- 1 to get 20%.
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