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>

       alsactl [clean] <card # or id or device> [[control identifiers]]

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
   Introduction
       The <card> argument is optional. If no soundcards are specified,  setup
       for all cards will be saved, loaded or monitored.

   store <card>
       This  command saves the current driver state for the selected soundcard
       to the configuration file.

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

   nrestore <card>
       This command is like restore, but it notifies also the daemon to do new
       rescan for available soundcards.

   init <card>
       This command tries to initialize all devices to a default state. If de-
       vice is not known, error code 99 is returned.

   daemon
       This command manages to save periodically the sound state.

   rdaemon
       This command is like daemon but restore the sound state at first.

   kill <cmd>
       This command notifies the daemon to do the specified  operation  (quit,
       rescan, save_and_quit).

   monitor <card>
       This  command is for monitoring the events received from the given con-
       trol device.

   clean <card> [filter]
       This command cleans the controls created by applications.

       The optional element identifiers are accepted as a  filter.  One  extra
       argument is parsed as an element identifiers.

       Example: alsactl clean 0 "name='PCM'" "name='Mic Phantom'"

   dump-state
       This command dumps the current state (all cards) to stdout.

   dump-cfg
       This  command  dumps  the  current configuration (all cards) to stdout.
       Note that the configuration hooks are evaluated.

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.

       -a, --config-dir
              Select  the  boot / hotplug ALSA configuration directory to use.
              The default is /var/lib/alsa.

       -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, restore and init  commands.  Do  not  show  'No
              soundcards  found' and do not set an error exit code when sound-
              cards 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.

       -U, --no-ucm
              Skip  the  UCM  init even if available. It may be useful for the
              test the legacy init configuration.

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)