(K)Ubuntu 17.10 - No Audio devices found, no settings, no sound

Question

I just installed Kubuntu 17.10 (reinstall, from 17.04), keeping my old /home, but formatting/reinstall to /boot and /

When it started up after installing, I noticed the sound icon in tray being the "speaker + red line", indicating no sound. Systray Sound Icon > Dropdown say:

no output or input devices found

In Settings, I can't change anything related to audio since the system claims there's nothing there. Settings > Multimedia > Audio Volume. No ouput/input device found.

Strangely enough, Spotify and VLC is making sounds. But not Firefox, not Pillars of Eternity (Steam (Flatpak)). And nothing show up in settings. Those pics were taken while playing music in Spotify.

If I open Volume Control (Menu > Multimedia > PulseAudio Volume Control), I get a box displaying the following message:

Connection to PulseAudio failed. Automatic retry in 5s. In this case this is likely because PULSE_SERVER in the Environment/X11 Root Window Properties or default-server in client.conf is misconfigures. The situation can also arise when PulseAudio crashed and left stale details in the X11 Root Window. If this is the case, then PulseAudio should autospawn again, or if this is not configured you should run start-pulseaudio-x11 manually.

These was no countdown (5s), but the window did blink twice to something to the effect of "trying to connect to PulseAudio". Nothing happend after that.

I tried start-pulseaudio-x11. Output:

Connection failure: Connection refused
pa_context_connect() failed: Connection refused

My sound device is connected via standard Jack (normal speakers). No HDMI or anything. Two monitors connected via DP. Had no problems with it on 17.04.

I tried the following, from an old question: mv ~/.pulse ~/.pulse_backup

Result: mv: cannot stat '/home/USER/.pulse': No such file or directory

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TL;DR: Audio doesn't work after installing Kubuntu 17.10 (/home from 17.04). No settings available in audio Settings. Sound from VLC and Spotify, but not Firefox, game/steam. Error message say PulseAudio failed.

Solution 1

I had the same problem and seeing the logs in /var/log/syslog I had an error for pulseaudio daemon:

[pulseaudio] module.c: Module "module-switch-on-connect" should be loaded once at most. Refusing to load.

So I opened /etc/pulse/default.pa and edited it using # to disable 3 lines:

#.ifexists module-switch-on-connect.so
#load-module module-switch-on-connect
#.endif

Maybe it'ś not the best solution but it solved my trouble.

Solution 2

I have solved this by reinstalling pulseaudio.

Pay attention: if you have some custom edits inside /etc/pulse, they get lost if executing rm -rf /etc/pulse as shown below! In my case there are only a hand full of files that have been reinstalled.

Update 2019: take care if package plasma-desktop is uninstalled while removing pulseaudio. Reinstall before booting, otherwise your system may not boot properly.

• apt-get remove --purge pulseaudio
• rm -rf /etc/pulse (maybe remove $HOME/.config/pulse also)
• apt-get install pulseaudio
• apt-get install plasma-desktop
• reboot

This also deinstalled some other packages (like oss*) which have not been reinstalled, and in my case, I don't miss them at all. ;)

[EDIT]

If your card is listed by something like sudo aplay -l, but not listed in pavucontrol, your card may be blocked by further processes. Check that sudo fuser -v /dev/snd/* doesn't list any other processes than pulseaudio. In my case when upgrading to kubuntu 19.04 it was blocked by squeezelite process, so I stopped and disabled squeezelite and everything was fine:

$ sudo fuser -v /dev/snd/*
/dev/snd/controlC0: root  872 F..... squeezelite
/dev/snd/pcmC0D0p:  root  872 F....m squeezelite
[... bad ...]
$ sudo systemctl disable squeezelite
$ sudo systemctl stop squeezelite
$ pulseaudio -k
$ sudo fuser -v /dev/snd/*
/dev/snd/controlC0: myUsername 1459 F..... pulseaudio
[... good ...]
$ pavucontrol

... et voila! My soundcard is available inside pavucontrol again.

Solution 3

I had the exact same problem (same symptoms) and ended up wasting hours looking for a solution. I solved the issue by editing default.pa to statically load modules and replaced hw:1,0 with hw:0,0

sudo nano /etc/pulse/default.pa

Content to change:

load-module module-alsa-sink device=hw:0,0  
load-module module-alsa-source device=hw:0,0  
load-module module-null-sink  
load-module module-pipe-sink  

Save and exit, then run:

sudo alsa force-reload  
pulseaudio -k  
start-pulseaudio-x11  

Hopefully you have sound at this point.

Solution 4

just refuse back or reload pulseaudio service/etc that directly behave on..

first check up if ther's no any hardware issue that's mean hardware it self are on nice condition and detected with driver and them self is installed/good

use lspci aplay -l or whatever that can help you to determine the device is okay

next just refuse it back, you can use any daemon service reloader that can help you to refuse your service it self

or just force with fuser -fkv /dev/snd/* -v for verbose -f for force -k for kill -last - following by the service is sourced

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Comments

[Admin]

Here's the bug report for this problem: bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/pulseaudio/+bug/1720519

[Edward Alekos]

Thanks for the answer, but I just went ahead and solved it the old fashion way, by reinstalling the OS :) I'll put this answer in my "Tips and Tricks" document, in case I need it again in the future, however!

[thw24]

Solved it for me, many thanks! This should really not happen after an upgrade...

[gconcon]

Solved for me too. Great!

[Ben DeMott]

had this issue with Thinkpad t470 on Ubuntu 18.04, This fixed it.

[Aruna]

following helped me. sudo alsa force-reload && pulseaudio -k && start-pulseaudio-x11

[tripulse]

Thanks this method worked for me. It's most accurate, in my opinion.

[PointedEars]

Works like a charm even on Devuan. Now also PulseAudio is started automatically with Plasma 5 as per /usr/bin/pulseaudio --start --log-target=syslog again, and the duplicate mixer icon is gone. \\//,