xenial (1) alsactl.1.gz

NAME

       alsactl - advanced controls for ALSA soundcard driver

SYNOPSIS

       alsactl [options] [store|restore|init] <card # or id or device>

       alsactl monitor <card # or id>

DESCRIPTION

       alsactl  is  used  to  control  advanced  settings  for  the ALSA soundcard drivers. It supports multiple
       soundcards. If your card has features that you can't seem to control from a mixer application,  you  have
       come to the right place.

COMMANDS

       store saves the current driver state for the selected soundcard to the configuration file.

       restore  loads  driver  state  for the selected soundcard from the configuration file. If restoring fails
       (eventually partly), the init action is called.

       nrestore is like restore, but it notifies also the daemon to do new rescan for available soundcards.

       init tries to initialize all devices to a default state. If  device  is  not  known,  error  code  99  is
       returned.

       daemon manages to save periodically the sound state.

       rdaemon like daemon but restore the sound state at first.

       kill notifies the daemon to do the specified operation (quit, rescan, save_and_quit).

       monitor is for monitoring the events received from the given control device.

       If no soundcards are specified, setup for all cards will be saved, loaded or monitored.

OPTIONS

       -h, --help
              Help: show available flags and commands.

       -d, --debug
              Use debug mode: a bit more verbose.

       -v, --version
              Print alsactl version number.

       -f, --file
              Select the configuration file to use. The default is /var/lib/alsa/asound.state.

       -l, --lock
              Use  the file locking to serialize the concurrent access to the state file (this option is default
              for the global state file).

       -L, --no-lock
              Do not use the file locking to serialize the concurrent access to the state  file  (including  the
              global state file).

       -O, --lock-state-file
              Select the state lock file path.

       -F, --force
              Used  with  restore  command.   Try  to restore the matching control elements as much as possible.
              This option is set as default now.

       -g, --ignore
              Used with store and restore commands. Do not show 'No soundcards found' and do not  set  an  error
              exit code when soundcards are not installed.

       -P, --pedantic
              Used  with  restore command.  Don't restore mismatching control elements.  This option was the old
              default behavior.

       -I, --no-init-fallback
              Don't initialize cards if restore fails.  Since version 1.0.18, alsactl tries  to  initialize  the
              card  with  the  restore  operation as default.  But this can cause incompatibility with the older
              version.  The caller may expect that the state won't be touched if no  state  file  exists.   This
              option takes the restore behavior back to the older version by suppressing the initialization.

       -r, --runstate
              Save  restore and init state to this file. The file will contain only errors.  Errors are appended
              with the soundcard id to the end of file.

       -R, --remove
              Remove runstate file at first.

       -E, --env #=#
              Set environment variable (useful for init action or you  may  override  ALSA_CONFIG_PATH  to  read
              different or optimized configuration - may be useful for "boot" scripts).

       -i, --initfile
              The configuration file for init. By default, PREFIX/share/alsa/init/00main is used.

       -p, --period
              The store period in seconds for the daemon command.

       -e, --pid-file
              The pathname to store the process-id file in the HDB UUCP format (ASCII).

       -b, --background
              Run the task in background.

       -s, --syslog
              Use syslog for messages.

       -n, --nice
              Set the process priority (see 'man nice')

       -c, --sched-idle
              Set the process scheduling policy to idle (SCHED_IDLE).

FILES

       /var/lib/alsa/asound.state  (or  whatever  file  you  specify  with the -f flag) is used to store current
       settings for your soundcards. The  settings  include  all  the  usual  soundcard  mixer  settings.   More
       importantly, alsactl is capable of controlling other card-specific features that mixer apps usually don't
       know about.

       The configuration file is generated automatically by running alsactl  store.  Editing  the  configuration
       file  by  hand  may be necessary for some soundcard features (e.g. enabling/disabling automatic mic gain,
       digital output, joystick/game ports, some future MIDI routing options, etc).

SEE ALSO

        amixer(1), alsamixer(1), aplay(1), alsactl_init(7)

BUGS

       None known.

AUTHOR

       alsactl is by  Jaroslav  Kysela  <perex@perex.cz>  and  Abramo  Bagnara  <abramo@alsa-project.org>.  This
       document is by Paul Winkler <zarmzarm@erols.com>.

                                                   07 May 2014                                        ALSACTL(1)