Final update (hopefully): It seems that I have been able to fix the issue. I’m not sure what exactly caused the problem but either removing fluidsynth or installing the wireplumber ppa fixed the issue and I have working audio again. I’ve also removed pulseaudio and undid my edit to the modprobe blacklist, as they were only done as a temporary solution and they are no longer necessary.

For the past three days, I’ve been having this issue where my computer starts with no audio and the only sound device listed is a “dummy output” device. I’ve tried looking online for solution but the only solution I found has to be redone manually every time I start/restart my computer. It also seems like this issue is common with and possibly specific to the sound card my computer has, which is an “Intel Sunrise Point-LP HD Audio”.

The solution that worked for me was to add blacklist snd_soc_avs to the modprobe blacklist and then run the two commands sudo alsa force-reload and pulseaudio. Adding snd_soc_avs to the blacklist permanently brought back my actually audio devices but it didn’t fix the audio nor did it remove the dummy output device. The two commands I listed do restore the audio and remove the dummy output device but they only work for the current session and I have to run them again after starting/restarting my computer.

I have no problem doing this if there isn’t a permanent solution but I would like a permanent solution, if possible.

  • gnuhaut@lemmy.ml
    2·
    4 days ago

    Oh good. Maybe you can try restarting pipewire w/o rebooting.

    First, check if pulse is running (it might be even if uninstalled), with systemctl --user list-units (search for pulse by typing /pulse) or ps -A|grep pulse and kill it with (probably) something like systemctl --user stop pulseaudio or maybe killall pulseaudio. Not sure what’s better here, but it needs to be killed if it’s running.

    Then do systemctl --user restart pipewire pipewire-pulse wireplumber.

    • vortexal@lemmy.mlOP
      1·
      4 days ago

      For some reason the the “stop” command didn’t work as it thought pulseaudio wasn’t running but I was able terminate it through htop. Also, that didn’t work, it did restart pipewire but my normal audio devices are still missing and I still don’t have working audio. I did, just in case, also check the journalctl and fuser commands you gave me previously, and fuser still just lists pipewire and journalctl stil gives the same error messages as before.

      • gnuhaut@lemmy.ml
        2·
        4 days ago

        Yeah I wrote that stop command wrong, it’s supposed to be systemctl --user stop pulseaudio. The relevant errors from journalctl were the “busy” errors. Are they still there? Maybe they’re old messages? You can type G to go to the end of the log.

        Also, and this is probably my last suggestion, try restarting the socket with systemctl --user restart pipewire-pulse.socket. And maybe restart all the other crap as well for good measure. My theory here is that pulseaudio overwrote that socket with it’s own socket, and anything trying to play sound would be trying to connect to the nonexistent pulseaudio, and maybe restarting pipewire doesn’t actually recreate the socket, because systemd does that, but I’m not sure that’s actually how that works.

        Theoretically logging out and in again should also restart all the things pipewire I think, but it’s possible that whatever is slowing down your boot is actually slowing down the login, so do at your own risk.

        • vortexal@lemmy.mlOP
          1·
          4 days ago

          Ok, so a lot of them are old messages, none of the messages from this session are labeled as busy. I did just try logging out and back in and that was pretty much instantaneous, so whatever it was that caused my computer to boot slowly just effect the boot itself. But yeah, I tried restarting pipewire and everything related to it and it’s still just showing the dummy output device and audio isn’t working. Thanks for trying though.

          • gnuhaut@lemmy.ml
            2·
            4 days ago

            If we assume, for a moment, that your issue was in fact related to fluidsynth, which I kinda still think it might be, because of what fuser and the logs showed, it would be a good idea to undo your module blacklist thingy and reboot.

            If your slow boot issue persists, and you try to fix that tomorrow, then try looking at the bootup messages as described here:

            https://askubuntu.com/questions/25022/how-to-enable-boot-messages-to-be-printed-on-screen-during-boot-up

            If you reinstall pulseaudio to get back to where you were before, uninstall pipewire, those two shouldn’t be running simultaneously.

            Good luck and keep me updated if you manage to fix it somehow.

            • vortexal@lemmy.mlOP
              2·
              4 days ago

              Ok, even though I said I’d wait until tomorrow, I decided to try it again. It seemed to boot more or less normally but I did try someone else’s suggestion and it got audio working again. I did undo the edit I made to the modprobe blacklist and I did keep fluidsynth and pulseaudio uninstalled but I tried using the wireplumber ppa, like someone else suggested and my audio is working again. Granded, I have no idea what actually fixed the issue, so I don’t know who to fully credit but thanks for helping.