Headphone jack dead after upgrade to Ubuntu 14.04

September 22, 2015 1:48 PM

I recently installed Ubuntu 14.04 on a Toshiba laptop and now the headphone jack isn't working.

I've found a few forum threads about this issue, but so far haven't been able to fix it - hivemind, can you help me out?

posted by ryanshepard to Computers & Internet (3 answers total)

I've encountered similar behaviors where the default sound output is being sent through the HDMI port instead of the headphone/line-out jack. If you run:

aplay -l

If you find that to be the case you can change the default output by creating

/etc/asound.conf

with entries like:

defaults.pcm.card 1
defaults.ctl.card 1

where the number is the device you actually want. The other possible issue is that sound is working but just muted. You can install alsamixer and check.

I've been running Linux as my primary desktop for 19 years. Sound and hibernation have always been unfortunately tricky to get right if they don't work out of the box.
posted by roue at 2:21 PM on September 22, 2015

If the video card offers HDMI, sometimes it will be selected as the default output device. Of course, you won't hear anything if nothing is plugged into the HDMI port. Happens on Windows, too, at least here.

So, check Sound Settings (in System Settings or by a right click on the Volume icon in the panel) to see if the headphones are selected as the output device. You'll see other settings there, too.
posted by justcorbly at 3:28 PM on September 22, 2015

This is an old familiar one to me. I remember filing bugs about this for a co-worker back in 2007!

browsing through bugs.launchpad.net, it seems like this was a big problem around 2010 as well.

It seems that the most common recommendation to diagnose this is rebuilding your audio drivers, which is a little gritty and involved.

I'd recommend filing a bug by running ubuntu-bug alsa-driver and letting your web browser lead you through the forms.
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 6:09 AM on September 25, 2015