Manual: alsactl

ALSACTL(1)					   General Commands Manual					  ALSACTL(1)

NAME
       alsactl - advanced controls for ALSA soundcard driver

SYNOPSIS
       alsactl [options] [store|restore|init] 

       alsactl monitor 

       alsactl info 

       alsactl [clean]  [[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    argument is optional. If no soundcards are specified, setup for all cards will be saved, loaded or moni‐
       tored.

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

   restore 
       This command loads driver state for the selected soundcard from the configuration file. If restoring  fails  (eventu‐
       ally partly), the init action is called.

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

   init 
       This command tries to initialize all devices to a default state. If device 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 
       This command notifies the daemon to do the specified operation (quit, rescan, save_and_quit).

   monitor 
       This command is for monitoring the events received from the given control device.

   info 
       This command shows the general information in the YAML format collected from the given control device (sound card).

   clean  [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 soundcards are not installed.

       -P, --pedantic
	      Used  with  restore command.  Don't restore mismatching control elements.	 This option was the old default be‐
	      havior.

       -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 ex‐
	      pect 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 op‐
	      timized configuration - may be useful for "boot" scripts).

       -i, --initfile
	      The configuration file for init. By default, PREFIX/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	 settings  include  all the usual soundcard mixer settings.  More importantly, 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, joy‐
       stick/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  and Abramo Bagnara . This document is by Paul
       Winkler .

							 07 May 2014						  ALSACTL(1)