# Sound disabled by baby!



## nickednamed (Dec 9, 2012)

The other day I was sitting at the PC with a few virtual terminals open with a baby on my lap and she pounded the keyboard, a bunch of stuff popped up then disappeared, then my sound just stopped.

After rebooting, still no sound in any application. As far as I can tell it should still work fine: The speakers work with other inputs just fine.


```
cat /dev/sndstat
FreeBSD Audio Driver (newpcm: 32bit 2009061500/i386)
Installed devices:
pcm0: <HDA Realtek ALC260 PCM #0 Analog> (play/rec) default
```


```
kldload snd_hda
kldload: can't load snd_hda: File exists
```

I'm guessing all the right drivers are still loaded. Short of booting with a different system, what can I try to make sure my sound card didn't just fail and find the cause of the problem?


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## nickednamed (Dec 9, 2012)

Will mark as solved. No idea how this was done, but apparently my mixer settings were changed.

Solved in this way by set the mixer level from the command line, as root:


```
mixer -f /dev/mixer 75:75
```


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## drhowarddrfine (Dec 9, 2012)

You need to return the baby to where you got it from. They're nothing but trouble.


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## Beastie (Dec 9, 2012)

Are you using a desktop environment (e.g. KDE, GNOME, etc.)?

DEs probably provide keyboard shortcuts to set the volume level or mute it and your baby must have pressed one.

Multimedia keys (on the top of your keyboard) include keys for sound control and may be enabled.


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## sossego (Dec 9, 2012)

Anyone who can handle a baby and FreeBSD at the same time should be given a lot of respect.


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## UNIXgod (Dec 9, 2012)

sossego said:
			
		

> Anyone who can handle a baby and FreeBSD at the same time should be given a lot of respect.




It's not a bug. It's a feature!


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## nickednamed (Dec 10, 2012)

As posted above, problem solved, although I am still not sure how it got started in the first place:

I am not running a DE, I use x11/xorg-minimal with x11-wm/spectrwm, my keyboard has a few multimedia buttons, but I haven't noticed any of them working with any of my programs, other than multimedia/mplayer2.

Anyway, gave me a chance to get more familiar with "mixer" so at least there is that


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## roddierod (Dec 10, 2012)

Never work in terminals or consoles with babies or toddlers around...and by all means never ever log in as root when the are awake...I had to learn that the hard way.


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