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>
11 alsactl monitor <card # or id>
13 alsactl info <card # or id>
15 alsactl [clean] <card # or id or device> [[control identifiers]]
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20 alsactl is used to control advanced settings for the ALSA soundcard
21 drivers. It supports multiple soundcards. If your card has features
22 that you can't seem to control from a mixer application, you have come
23 to the right place.
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27 Introduction
28 The <card> argument is optional. If no soundcards are specified, setup
29 for all cards will be saved, loaded or monitored.
30 store <card>
33 This command saves the current driver state for the selected soundcard
34 to the configuration file.
35 restore <card>
38 This command loads driver state for the selected soundcard from the
39 configuration file. If restoring fails (eventually partly), the init
40 action is called.
41 nrestore <card>
44 This command is like restore, but it notifies also the daemon to do new
45 rescan for available soundcards.
46 init <card>
49 This command tries to initialize all devices to a default state. If de‐
50 vice is not known, error code 99 is returned.
51 daemon
54 This command manages to save periodically the sound state.
55 rdaemon
58 This command is like daemon but restore the sound state at first.
59 kill <cmd>
62 This command notifies the daemon to do the specified operation (quit,
63 rescan, save_and_quit).
64 monitor <card>
67 This command is for monitoring the events received from the given con‐
68 trol device.
69 info <card>
72 This command shows the general information in the YAML format collected
73 from the given control device (sound card).
74 clean <card> [filter]
77 This command cleans the controls created by applications.
78 The optional element identifiers are accepted as a filter. One extra
80 argument is parsed as an element identifiers.
81 Example: alsactl clean 0 "name='PCM'" "name='Mic Phantom'"
83 dump-state
86 This command dumps the current state (all cards) to stdout.
87 dump-cfg
90 This command dumps the current configuration (all cards) to stdout.
91 Note that the configuration hooks are evaluated.
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95 -h, --help
96 Help: show available flags and commands.
97 -d, --debug
100 Use debug mode: a bit more verbose.
101 -v, --version
104 Print alsactl version number.
105 -f, --file
108 Select the configuration file to use. The default is
109 /var/lib/alsa/asound.state.
110 -a, --config-dir
113 Select the boot / hotplug ALSA configuration directory to use.
114 The default is /var/lib/alsa.
115 -l, --lock
118 Use the file locking to serialize the concurrent access to the
119 state file (this option is default for the global state file).
120 -L, --no-lock
123 Do not use the file locking to serialize the concurrent access
124 to the state file (including the global state file).
125 -O, --lock-state-file
128 Select the state lock file path.
129 -F, --force
132 Used with restore command. Try to restore the matching control
133 elements as much as possible. This option is set as default
134 now.
135 -g, --ignore
138 Used with store, restore and init commands. Do not show 'No
139 soundcards found' and do not set an error exit code when sound‐
140 cards are not installed.
141 -P, --pedantic
144 Used with restore command. Don't restore mismatching control
145 elements. This option was the old default behavior.
146 -I, --no-init-fallback
149 Don't initialize cards if restore fails. Since version 1.0.18,
150 alsactl tries to initialize the card with the restore operation
151 as default. But this can cause incompatibility with the older
152 version. The caller may expect that the state won't be touched
153 if no state file exists. This option takes the restore behavior
154 back to the older version by suppressing the initialization.
155 -r, --runstate
158 Save restore and init state to this file. The file will contain
159 only errors. Errors are appended with the soundcard id to the
160 end of file.
161 -R, --remove
164 Remove runstate file at first.
165 -E, --env #=#
168 Set environment variable (useful for init action or you may
169 override ALSA_CONFIG_PATH to read different or optimized config‐
170 uration - may be useful for "boot" scripts).
171 -i, --initfile
174 The configuration file for init. By default, PRE‐
175 FIX/share/alsa/init/00main is used.
176 -p, --period
179 The store period in seconds for the daemon command.
180 -e, --pid-file
183 The pathname to store the process-id file in the HDB UUCP format
184 (ASCII).
185 -b, --background
188 Run the task in background.
189 -s, --syslog
192 Use syslog for messages.
193 -n, --nice
196 Set the process priority (see 'man nice')
197 -c, --sched-idle
200 Set the process scheduling policy to idle (SCHED_IDLE).
201 -D, --ucm-defaults
204 Execute also the 'defaults' section from the UCM configuration.
205 The standard behaviour is to execute only 'once' section.
206 -U, --no-ucm
209 Skip the UCM init even if available. It may be useful for the
210 test the legacy init configuration.
211
214 /var/lib/alsa/asound.state (or whatever file you specify with the -f
215 flag) is used to store current settings for your soundcards. The set‐
216 tings include all the usual soundcard mixer settings. More impor‐
217 tantly, alsactl is capable of controlling other card-specific features
218 that mixer apps usually don't know about.
219 The configuration file is generated automatically by running alsactl
221 store. Editing the configuration file by hand may be necessary for some
222 soundcard features (e.g. enabling/disabling automatic mic gain, digital
223 output, joystick/game ports, some future MIDI routing options, etc).
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227 amixer(1), alsamixer(1), aplay(1), alsactl_init(7)
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231 None known.
232
235 alsactl is by Jaroslav Kysela <perex@perex.cz> and Abramo Bagnara
236 <abramo@alsa-project.org>. This document is by Paul Winkler
237 <zarmzarm@erols.com>.
238 07 May 2014 ALSACTL(1)