SOLVED: Sound stops working randomly in Ubuntu 14.04

[Eiselin Hulkenberg]

EDIT: It is hardware related...

[thetargos]

You say this happens in "everything", as in all applications that produce sound? Not just Steam or games in general, but also applications such as totem and others are affected? If so, the problem may lie in Pulse Audio. The daemon may be dying unexpectedly. The command pulseaudio --ceck will tell you if the daemon has exit with an error code, no return means the daemon is running OK.

[Captain America]

Try:

sudo apt-get remove pulseaudio*

then

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-audio-dev/pulse-testing

then

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get full-upgrade

then

sudo apt-get install pulseaudio

then

sudo reboot

then report back if it works or not.

[SRH]

Have you tried any other Linux OS besides Ubuntu or a newer version of Ubuntu to confirm that it is indeed pulseaudio?

[Vince ✟]

Originally posted by Boulderfield:

I did the command thing today, and it did not return anything. Also pulseaudio was active in task manager, and it is automatically restarted if I kill it manually anyway.

I plugged in headphones, they did not work on first try, but after replug they work... So headphones are working... speakers not. I tried to replug them multiple times, and speakers still not working. Also checked stuff in sound settings, nothing.

So posibly HW issue?

Are there any tests I can do? stuff i can check in logs?

You went into your sound options and set the main sound card to default yea? I know that is a most basic suggestion, but its something. I have to manually set mine to the proper sound card upon fresh distro install, or I have no sound. Good luck!

[halifax]

Originally posted by Boulderfield:

Originally posted by srh420:

Have you tried any other Linux OS besides Ubuntu or a newer version of Ubuntu to confirm that it is indeed pulseaudio?

No, it was working normally for months.

I will wait for Ubuntu 16.04 this month, and reinstall the whole system if I won't fix it. If it won't work still, I will try Fedora or something.

As a possible way to add another option/troubleshooting layer:

Depending on your level of expertise with Linux, throwing Debian 8 Stable on the same hardware/PC might not be too much of a PITA for you, and does not have to involve destroying your current distro.

As a mid-level Linux user talking to someone, not sure if you're beginner/mid level/guru alpha geek, but as long as you get to an understanding of how/where your HDD partitions are laid out, you can have many distros on the same PC, as long as you take your time and don't f**k it up with the installers :-)

I find Debian's install wizard during the partition phase to be a little more reliable than Ubuntu, so I'd trust it a bit more for installing alongside your current Ubuntu distro.

[halifax]

Originally posted by Boulderfield:

I found the debian installer to be kinda hard (at least the expert / manual mode), I know it has automatic mode too (which probably is the same as with Ubuntu).

You definitely want to get comfortable with the advanced partitioning mode in the installer to do multi/dual boot setups.... Ubuntu has the automatic dual-boot selection once it detects other OS's, but I wouldn't trust that route just because I've had bad luck with the Ubuntu installation wizard in the past.

It takes a little reading and online help until how the partitions work starts to make a little more sense...

I'm not an expert Linux guru, but I've had decent results going with something like:
/dev/sdb1: 532MB EFI System/Fat32 (your first install of a Linux distro should make this?)
/dev/sdb2: 100GB Ubuntu 15.10
/dev/sdb4: 382GB Debian 8
/dev/sdb3: 17GB Swap partition (think this is re-used by all on-disk Linux kernels?)
/dev/sdb5: 1.1MB Free Space

(partitions 3 and 4 are listed here out of sequential order, but that is how they are listed in the Debian Disks app, lowest to highest on disk)

I have yet to use gparted myself, so far, the installation wizard's internal implementations of similar functions have been sufficient for me.

I have been selecting, in the Debian+Ubuntu installers, "all OS filesystems on same partition" or whatever it's called, and plan to throw another Debian Xfce install on this same drive by shrinking the 382GB partition in the Debian installation wizard down to 100GB and then installing the next Debian install in "largest free space".

And then again I'm planning same setup for openSUSE, assuming openSUSE's installation wizard's partition section is as easy for me to understand as Debian's and is compatible with this partition layout. Or, alternatively, I could just blow the whole sh** up when I try openSUSE's installer and have to start over X-)

Originally posted by Boulderfield:

I have no experience with Debian though, I heard It's for advanced users.

It's more work than Ubuntu, you will have to google things to get it where you want as a PC gamer. But not nearly as advanced as distros like Arch/Gentoo. Plus, if you have existing knowledge in Ubuntu, a lot will transfer over since Ubuntu is mostly Debian based under the hood.

EDIT:
Big caveat here: I have a separate HDD that has a non-OS ext4 data partition where I store my main user data; pictures, user projects, Steam Games Folder, Win10 VM, etc... All my Linux distros share this stuff, so adding/losing a given Linux distro on /dev/sdb(X) is a lot less painful than if everything was stored on the active Linux kernel/distro install partitions I listed above.

[halifax]

EFI boot partition, it's a PC hardware standard that replaces BIOS, I believe Linux and Windows will automatically make this boot partition on a full wipe-the-entire-disk install. GRUB uses it for dual/multi booting.

Unfortunately, setting up a dual-boot distro was the only real (debatable) help I had on your sound issue - I have not worked with sound problems at all in Linux. Since you are on a laptop with probably only one HDD, it might not even be a good idea, though. Keeping important data on another disk unaffected by dual/multi-boot install hazards is the best approach there. Regards.