That's why I like amixer set Master 100% unmute;alsactl store Something else /var/lock/alsa.state.lck may need to be removed for alsactl store to work. One thing I haven't figured out about alsa in aplay -l on systems with more than one sound card is how to tell which of all the cards is actually in use at any given time among available cards. -- Jude <jdashiel at panix dot com> "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." Ed Howdershelt 1940. On Mon, 26 Feb 2024, Martin McCormick wrote: > I am really good at getting in my own way when it comes to > keeping orca speaking. > > The system running orca is a HP Pavillion desktop which > is about 2 years old, running debian bullseye and it sure cooks > right along very nicely except for sound where it's just one > thing after another. > > With this version of debian, I installed it from a debian > iso image placed on a usb thumb drive and it talks if you type > the lower-case s as soon as you hear the beep from the piezo > buzzer on the mother board. > > I wanted to adjust some sound levels yesterday so I fired > up alsamixer which I am not familiar with. Alsamixer is not a > GUI application as such as uses a curses-based terminal interface > and can be accessed via command-line terminal. > > I logged in to mate's terminal and commanded alsamixer to > start using card 0 or -c 0. > > I am not sure what I did but about 2 or 3 key strokes in > to the session, I typed the Enter key and, poof! voice output was > gone. > > I finally logged in to that system from another Linux box > in text-based command-line mode, downloaded a backup of /var and > selected var/lib/alsa/asound.state which had that file in it. > > After copying /var/lib/alsa/asound.state from the backup, > I did > > sudo alsactl store which seems to have stored this older version > of asound.state then I rebooted. > > I was able to log in as the login still talked but as > soon as I entered the password, everything went silent again. > > I finally got on the Linux box that has no GUI and ssh'd > into the gnome system and then called alsamixer as me and that's > when I realized more how this all works. > > One is supposed to press F3 to be in the playback setup > mode. Apparently the function keys like F3 send a terminal code > sequence that is interpreted as F3 and then I noticed that the > volume slider for Master volume was all the way down to 0. > > The Up and Down arrows move that slider so I moved it up > and finally my orca console started speaking again. > > One then presses Escape once and alsamixer closes. > > Is there a faster and better way I could have done this? > > If I hadn't had a second Linux system, I'd still be > messing with it and the curses would be more than just in the > command-line interface. > > It's amazing how quickly one can go from hero to zero in > this game but finally I seem to have the talking orca terminal > back. > > Martin > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "blinux-list@xxxxxxxxxx" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to blinux-list+unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxx.