Package: alsa-utils
Version: 1.1.2
Severity: normal
Dear Debian folks,
I see the message below on a Debian Sid/unstable system.
```
$ sudo journalctl -u systemd-udevd
[…]
[…] systemd-udevd[323]: Process '/usr/sbin/alsactl -E HOME=/run/alsa restore 0'
failed with exit code 99.
```
If I am not mistaken, this is from the udev rule file [1].
```
ACTION=="add", SUBSYSTEM=="sound", KERNEL=="controlC*", KERNELS!="card*",
TEST=="@sbindir@", TEST=="@mydatadir@", GOTO="alsa_restore_go"
GOTO="alsa_restore_end"
LABEL="alsa_restore_go"
TEST!="@daemonswitch@", TEST=="/usr/sbin/alsactl", RUN+="@sbindir@/alsactl -E
HOME=@alsactlhome@ restore $attr{device/number}"
TEST=="@daemonswitch@", TEST=="/usr/sbin/alsactl", RUN+="@sbindir@/alsactl -E
HOME=@alsactlhome@ nrestore $attr{device/number}"
LABEL="alsa_restore_end"
```
Manually running this command shows that `/var/lib/alsa/asound.state` is
missing.
```
$ sudo /usr/sbin/alsactl -E HOME=/run/alsa restore 0
/usr/sbin/alsactl: load_state:1683: Cannot open /var/lib/alsa/asound.state for
reading: No such file or directory
/usr/sbin/alsactl: sysfs_init:48: sysfs path '/sys' is invalid
X11 connection rejected because of wrong authentication.
xcb_connection_has_error() returned true
Found hardware: "HDA-Intel" "Realtek ALC269VB" "HDA:10ec0269,10280577,00100100
HDA:80862806,80860101,00100000" "0x1028" "0x0577"
Hardware is initialized using a generic method
```
But there is also a systemd service unit [2] for the same purpose, which
checks for the presence of `/var/lib/alsa/asound.state`.
```
$ more /lib/systemd/system/basic.target.wants/alsa-restore.service
#
# Note that two different ALSA card state management schemes exist and they
# can be switched using a file exist check - /etc/alsa/state-daemon.conf .
#
[Unit]
Description=Save/Restore Sound Card State
Documentation=man:alsactl(1)
ConditionPathExists=!/etc/alsa/state-daemon.conf
ConditionPathExistsGlob=/dev/snd/control*
ConditionPathExists=/var/lib/alsa/asound.state
After=alsa-state.service
[Service]
Type=oneshot
RemainAfterExit=true
ExecStart=-/usr/sbin/alsactl -E HOME=/run/alsa restore
ExecStop=-/usr/sbin/alsactl -E HOME=/run/alsa store
$ systemctl status alsa-restore
● alsa-restore.service - Save/Restore Sound Card State
Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/alsa-restore.service; static; vendor
preset: enabled)
Active: inactive (dead)
Condition: start condition failed at Fri 2016-12-16 11:51:03 CET; 11min ago
└─ ConditionPathExists=/var/lib/alsa/asound.state was not met
Docs: man:alsactl(1)
```
Is the udev rule still needed? I don’t really know, how it’s supposed to
work, and what I don’t have that file `asound.state`.
It would be nice to not run `alsactl` during startup, if it’s failing,
to get rid of the error message.
Kind regards,
Paul
[1]
https://sources.debian.net/src/alsa-utils/1.1.2-1/alsactl/90-alsa-restore.rules.in/
[2]
https://sources.debian.net/src/alsa-utils/1.1.2-1/alsactl/alsa-restore.service.in/
