How do I restore missing asound files used in ALSA for 12.04

[Robbyx]

I use ALSA not pulse. I had it working the way I want and then started computer after an update and every time I try to play a video there is a report that the drivers are missing. This is an example:


Audio output failed:
The audio device "sysdefault:CARD=Intel" could not be used:
No such device.


Previously cat /proc/asound/modules showed three cards now it shows nothing.

These are the cards that seem to have lost all their content:
pcm ----no soundcards----
modules ---empty
hwdep ---empty
cards ---no soundcards ----

Without doing a system re-install is there a way of rebuilding the proc/asound files so that the soundcard entries are restored?

[pbrane]

I would think you could simply re-install alsa and libasound2. In a terminal

sudo apt-get --reinstall install alsa
sudo apt-get --reinstall install libasound2

might work. Or you could use synaptic package manager to reinstall the packages.

[Robbyx]

I followed your suggestion and although the alsa files were restored the empty files in proc/asound have not been regenerated. I think I need to run some procedure that will recreate the missing device info files. I do not what to run.

[pbrane]

hmm, it seems that the drivers may not be loading. the files in /proc are created by the drivers. Did you reboot after re-installing? You may need to do that to get the drivers loaded.

[Robbyx]

I did reboot.

[Yellow Pasque]

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Audio/AlsaInfo

[greatsirkain]

Think I did:

sudo aptitude --purge reinstall linux-sound-base alsa-base alsa-utils linux-image-`uname -r` linux-ubuntu-modules-`uname -r` libasound2

followed by:

sudo apt-get update

and then a reboot when I had similar problems

Edit: That was in 11.10