1ALSACTL(1) General Commands Manual ALSACTL(1)
2
6 alsactl - advanced controls for ALSA soundcard driver
7
10 alsactl [options] [store|restore|init] <card # or id or device>
11 alsactl monitor <card # or id>
13
16 alsactl is used to control advanced settings for the ALSA soundcard
17 drivers. It supports multiple soundcards. If your card has features
18 that you can't seem to control from a mixer application, you have come
19 to the right place.
20
23 store saves the current driver state for the selected soundcard to the
24 configuration file.
25 restore loads driver state for the selected soundcard from the configu‐
27 ration file. If restoring fails (eventually partly), the init action is
28 called.
29 nrestore is like restore, but it notifies also the daemon to do new
31 rescan for available soundcards.
32 init tries to initialize all devices to a default state. If device is
34 not known, error code 99 is returned.
35 daemon manages to save periodically the sound state.
37 rdaemon like daemon but restore the sound state at first.
39 kill notifies the daemon to do the specified operation (quit, rescan,
41 save_and_quit).
42 monitor is for monitoring the events received from the given control
44 device.
45 If no soundcards are specified, setup for all cards will be saved,
47 loaded or monitored.
48
51 -h, --help
52 Help: show available flags and commands.
53 -d, --debug
56 Use debug mode: a bit more verbose.
57 -v, --version
60 Print alsactl version number.
61 -f, --file
64 Select the configuration file to use. The default is
65 /var/lib/alsa/asound.state.
66 -l, --lock
69 Use the file locking to serialize the concurrent access to the
70 state file (this option is default for the global state file).
71 -L, --no-lock
74 Do not use the file locking to serialize the concurrent access
75 to the state file (including the global state file).
76 -O, --lock-state-file
79 Select the state lock file path.
80 -F, --force
83 Used with restore command. Try to restore the matching control
84 elements as much as possible. This option is set as default
85 now.
86 -g, --ignore
89 Used with store and restore commands. Do not show 'No soundcards
90 found' and do not set an error exit code when soundcards are not
91 installed.
92 -P, --pedantic
95 Used with restore command. Don't restore mismatching control
96 elements. This option was the old default behavior.
97 -I, --no-init-fallback
100 Don't initialize cards if restore fails. Since version 1.0.18,
101 alsactl tries to initialize the card with the restore operation
102 as default. But this can cause incompatibility with the older
103 version. The caller may expect that the state won't be touched
104 if no state file exists. This option takes the restore behavior
105 back to the older version by suppressing the initialization.
106 -r, --runstate
109 Save restore and init state to this file. The file will contain
110 only errors. Errors are appended with the soundcard id to the
111 end of file.
112 -R, --remove
115 Remove runstate file at first.
116 -E, --env #=#
119 Set environment variable (useful for init action or you may
120 override ALSA_CONFIG_PATH to read different or optimized config‐
121 uration - may be useful for "boot" scripts).
122 -i, --initfile
125 The configuration file for init. By default, PRE‐
126 FIX/share/alsa/init/00main is used.
127 -p, --period
130 The store period in seconds for the daemon command.
131 -e, --pid-file
134 The pathname to store the process-id file in the HDB UUCP format
135 (ASCII).
136 -b, --background
139 Run the task in background.
140 -s, --syslog
143 Use syslog for messages.
144 -n, --nice
147 Set the process priority (see 'man nice')
148 -c, --sched-idle
151 Set the process scheduling policy to idle (SCHED_IDLE).
152 -D, --ucm-defaults
155 Execute also the 'defaults' section from the UCM configuration.
156 The standard behaviour is to execute only 'once' section.
157 -U, --no-ucm
160 Skip the UCM init even if available. It may be useful for the
161 test the legacy init configuration.
162
165 /var/lib/alsa/asound.state (or whatever file you specify with the -f
166 flag) is used to store current settings for your soundcards. The set‐
167 tings include all the usual soundcard mixer settings. More impor‐
168 tantly, alsactl is capable of controlling other card-specific features
169 that mixer apps usually don't know about.
170 The configuration file is generated automatically by running alsactl
172 store. Editing the configuration file by hand may be necessary for some
173 soundcard features (e.g. enabling/disabling automatic mic gain, digital
174 output, joystick/game ports, some future MIDI routing options, etc).
175
178 amixer(1), alsamixer(1), aplay(1), alsactl_init(7)
179
182 None known.
183
186 alsactl is by Jaroslav Kysela <perex@perex.cz> and Abramo Bagnara
187 <abramo@alsa-project.org>. This document is by Paul Winkler
188 <zarmzarm@erols.com>.
189 07 May 2014 ALSACTL(1)