How can I reinstall pulseaudio? (12.04 64bit)

Question

I accidentally removed pulseaudio from my Ubuntu 12.04 64bit. I have tried reinstalling it using

sudo apt-get install pulseaudio

but my sound card doesn't appear in the list of the devices (in System Settings --> Sound).

For the moment I managed to get sounds by using ALSA, but I would like to reinstall pulseaudio and have it working as before my accidental removal.

How can I reinstall it and have the devices configured correctly?

Solution

If you just removed the packages (as opposed to purging them), run this command in a Terminal:

dpkg -l | grep '^r.*pulse'

It shows you a list of packages that were once installed but are now removed and which contain the word "pulse". Reinstalling those should help.

Alternatively or if you purged them, take a look at the file /var/log/dpkg.log. It contains a list of all changes done by the package management. You should be able to find the packages which have been removed at or close to the end of the file and reinstall them.

Comments

[Braiam]

Can you please add more details, such the contents of grep pulse /var/log/syslog and the output of dpkg -l | grep -E 'pulse|alsa'

[lucacerone]

grep pulse /var/log/syslog has an empty output, the output of dpkg can be found here: paste.ubuntu.com/6355508

[lucacerone]

this produces the output: E: [pulseaudio] main.c: Failed to kill daemon: No such process