Sound control icon disappeared

[koulaxizis]

Hi! I'm running Ubuntu 10.04 with LXDE installed from the Ubuntu repositories... After each reboot, the sound control icon disappears and i have to load it on the lxpanel again and again... Any ideas?

[Marty Jack]

Check to make sure you can actually write to ~/.config/lxpanel/LXDE/panels and that your change is in there after you add the panel. It is a simple text file. Compare to after you reboot and the change is lost.

[koulaxizis]

I checked it and it seems to be ok!! I have the permissions to write and it's the same after the reboot...

[Marty Jack]

Okay, if you could post /etc/asound.conf, and run alsamixer in a terminal and post what it says for Card and Chip at the upper left, and if you have mixers labeled Master, PCM, or Front.

I do see one thing that doesn't look right, but if it is going to fail it should do it both when you add the plugin and when you log in with it already there.

Also, confirm if the plugin in your configuration file is type="volumealsa" or type="volume"

[koulaxizis]

I attached a file for you...

On the left you can see the ./config/lxpanel/LXDE/panels file... as you can see, it seems to exist!! (volumealsa)

On the right (up), you can see that the volume control appears on the lxpanel configuration window (below the cursor / greek language)

On the right (down) you can see the result of running alsamixer in terminal

I believe that i should be able to see the icon on the taskbar... if i re-add it, it will appear and work properly but after a restart, it will disappear again...

[Marty Jack]

I have no idea. Everything looks reasonably normal as far as what your configuration looks like. Most people are having no problem, so it must be something about your particular machine. The puzzling part is how it works when you add it after you log in, but not as you start up. It should either work all the time or not at all.

If you have a second machine and sufficient debugging skills, or a friend who can help you, ssh into the machine, kill the panel, run it under the debugger with a breakpoint at volumealsa_constructor, and step until you find out why it won't initialize in the situations where it doesn't work properly.

[koulaxizis]

I'll see what i can do...

Thanks anyway for your help, i appreciate that!!

[aus9]

hi

until you get a better reply

it might be as simple as....adding your desktop file ....to the autostart section?

/home/koulaxizis/.config/autostart

logout and login to check

2) also for me...I prefer a higher PCM level

[ArizonaDude]

Hi all,

I know this discussion is really old, but if anyone is still looking for a solution or workaround, I may have found one, so I thought I would post it for reference.

First off, I have had a similar problem on my HP Compaq nx9010 laptop, running Lubuntu 10.04, (I know, that is really out of date), from a usb flash drive for years. I suspect that the problem is somehow related to either the fact that I am running from a flash drive, or to this specific machine, because using the same install disk to put the system onto another computer (with a hard drive) yielded a system without this issue. Anyhow, back to the computer with this issue, I discovered early on, that the easiest workaround was to simply refresh the panel as soon as the system finished booting. I would usually do this by right clicking over the panel, clicking Panel Settings, and then selecting "Top" on the Geometry tab of the resulting dialog. This resulted in the panel going to the top of the screen for a fraction of a second, and then returning to the bottom of the screen, with the elusive volume icon. However, after some googling today, I found that I could refresh the panel from the terminal by doing:

Code: Select all

lxpanelctl restart

This made me wonder if I could simply put this command in the autostart process somewhere, so that it would refresh the panel during every boot, which brings me to my workaround:

First, I made the following bash shell script, (named Script), to actually do the refreshing a few seconds after the system finished booting:

Code: Select all

#!/bin/bash
sleep 3; lxpanelctl restart

and then made the file executable.

Next, I made the following resetpanel-startup.desktop file in /etc/xdg/autostart: (You will need root access to do this)

Code: Select all

[Desktop Entry]
Name=Reset Panel
Comment=Refreshes the panel
Exec=./Script
Terminal=false
Type=Application

From there, I went into Menu >> Preferences >> Desktop Session Settings, and made sure that the entry titled "Reset Panel" on the "Automatically Started Applications" tab was checked.

After doing the above, (and of course re-booting), the panel, (theoretically), gets refreshed shortly after booting, and this then brings up the volume button.

As experienced forum members will easily be able to tell, I am not an experienced programmer. Thus, feel free to improve on my rather crude workaround if you feel like it.

Anyhow, using my rudimentary programming knowledge, I can speculate that the cause of the underlying problem is probably that the panel is not getting repainted or refreshed when it is suppose to. But again, that is just a guess.

Also, I can't guarantee that this is the solution to this problem, so don't take my word for it, and use it at your own risk. I am only posting it here in the hope that it is helpful. It is simply what worked for me.

Hope that helps.

[Rex Bouwense]

Welcome to the LXDE forum ArizonaDude. Under normal circumstances it is probably not a good idea to post on a thread that is that many years old because Operating Systems change and LXDE changes (however slowly that may be). You really ought to do a new install. I have Lubuntu 14.04 installed on my netbook and so far only one minor bug that was easily fixed. I believe that Lubuntu 10.04 was the very first version. I could be wrong about that. I do know that the first recognized version was 11.10.
By the way, where are you located in Arizona? I am in Sierra Vista.