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ALSACTL(1)		     General Commands Manual		      ALSACTL(1)

NAME
     alsactl - advanced controls for ALSA soundcard driver

SYNOPSIS
     alsactl [options] [store|restore|init] <card # or id or device>

     alsactl monitor <card # or id>

     alsactl info <card # or id>

     alsactl [clean] <card # or id or device> [[control identifiers]]

DESCRIPTION
     alsactl  is  used	to control advanced settings for the ALSA soundcard dri-
     vers. 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 <card> argument is optional. If no soundcards are specified, setup  for
     all cards will be saved, loaded or monitored.

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

   restore <card>
     This command loads driver state for the selected soundcard from the config-
     uration file. If restoring fails (eventually partly), the	init  action  is
     called.

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

   init <card>
     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 <cmd>
     This  command notifies the daemon to do the specified operation (quit, res-
     can, save_and_quit).

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

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

   clean <card> [filter]
     This command cleans the controls created by applications.

     The optional element identifiers are accepted as a filter. One extra  argu-
     ment 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 ele-
	    ments as much as possible.	This option is set as default now.

     -g, --ignore
	    Used  with	store, restore and init commands. Do not show 'No sound-
	    cards 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 ele-
	    ments.  This option was the old default behavior.

     -I, --no-init-fallback
	    Don't initialize cards if restore fails.  Since version 1.0.18, als-
	    actl tries to initialize the card with the restore operation as  de-
	    fault.   But  this can cause incompatibility with the older version.
	    The caller may expect 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 optimized configuration - may
	    be useful for "boot" scripts).

     -i, --initfile
	    The   configuration   file	  for	 init.	  By	default,    PRE-
	    FIX/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 capa-
     ble  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	<perex@perex.cz>  and	Abramo	 Bagnara
     <abramo@alsa-project.org>.    This    document    is    by   Paul	 Winkler
     <zarmzarm@erols.com>.

				   07 May 2014			      ALSACTL(1)

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