1ALSACTL(1) General Commands Manual ALSACTL(1)
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6 alsactl - advanced controls for ALSA soundcard driver
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10 alsactl [options] [store|restore|init] <card # or id or device>
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14 alsactl is used to control advanced settings for the ALSA soundcard
15 drivers. It supports multiple soundcards. If your card has features
16 that you can't seem to control from a mixer application, you have come
17 to the right place.
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21 store saves the current driver state for the selected soundcard to the
22 configuration file.
23 restore loads driver state for the selected soundcard from the configu‐
25 ration file. If restoring fails (eventually partly), the init action is
26 called.
27 init tries to initialize all devices to a default state. If device is
29 not known, error code 99 is returned.
30 If no soundcards are specified, setup for all cards will be saved or
32 loaded.
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36 -h, --help
37 Help: show available flags and commands.
38 -d, --debug
41 Use debug mode: a bit more verbose.
42 -v, --version
45 Print alsactl version number.
46 -f, --file
49 Select the configuration file to use. The default is
50 /etc/asound.state.
51 -F, --force
54 Used with restore command. Try to restore the matching control
55 elements as much as possible. This option is set as default
56 now.
57 -g, --ignore
60 Used with store and restore commands. Do not show 'No soundcards
61 found' and do not set an error exit code when soundcards are not
62 installed.
63 -P, --pedantic
66 Used with restore command. Don't restore mismatching control
67 elements. This option was the old default behavior.
68 -I, --no-init-fallback
71 Don't initialize cards if restore fails. Since version 1.0.18,
72 alsactl tries to initialize the card with the restore operation
73 as default. But this can cause incompatibility with the older
74 version. The caller may expect that the state won't be touched
75 if no state file exists. This option takes the restore behavior
76 back to the older version by suppressing the initialization.
77 -r, --runstate
80 Save restore and init state to this file. The file will contain
81 only errors. Errors are appended with the soundcard id to the
82 end of file.
83 -R, --remove
86 Remove runstate file at first.
87 -E, --env #=#
90 Set environment variable (useful for init action or you may
91 override ALSA_CONFIG_PATH to read different or optimized config‐
92 uration - may be useful for "boot" scripts).
93 -i, --initfile #=#
96 The configuration file for init. By default, PRE‐
97 FIX/share/alsa/init/00main is used.
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101 /etc/asound.state (or whatever file you specify with the -f flag) is
102 used to store current settings for your soundcards. The settings
103 include all the usual soundcard mixer settings. More importantly, als‐
104 actl is capable of controlling other card-specific features that mixer
105 apps usually don't know about.
106 The configuration file is generated automatically by running alsactl
108 store. Editing the configuration file by hand may be necessary for some
109 soundcard features (e.g. enabling/disabling automatic mic gain, digital
110 output, joystick/game ports, some future MIDI routing options, etc).
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114 amixer(1), alsamixer(1), aplay(1)
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118 None known.
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122 alsactl is by Jaroslav Kysela <perex@perex.cz> and Abramo Bagnara
123 <abramo@alsa-project.org>. This document is by Paul Winkler
124 <zarmzarm@erols.com>.
125 15 May 2001 ALSACTL(1)