alsactl

ALSACTL(1)                  General Commands Manual                 ALSACTL(1)

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 configu-
       ration 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 config-
              uration - may be useful for "boot" scripts).

       -i, --initfile
              The    configuration   file   for   init.   By   default,   PRE-
              FIX/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).

       -D, --ucm-defaults
              Execute  also the 'defaults' section from the UCM configuration.
              The standard behaviour is to execute only 'once' section.

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 set-
       tings include all the usual  soundcard  mixer  settings.   More  impor-
       tantly,  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)