[ltp] Volume buttons turn microphone on

[JP Renaud]

> Date: Thursday 10 May 2007 
> From: Richard Neill <rn214@hermes.cam.ac.uk>
> Phil wrote:
> > Hi
> >
> > I'm running Ubuntu 7.04 on a T60 2007-63G. Everything seems to work well
> > (although suspend to ram failed today for the first time :-( but I have
> > a problem with the keyboard volume buttons. Instead of raising/lowering
> > Master volume they raise/lower the Playback Microphone volume. Looking
> > in /etc/acpi it seems that the button presses fire the
> > vol[up|down]btn.sh scripts, which use acpi_fakekey to insert a
> > KEY_VOLUMEUP/DOWN keypress, but I can't work out what happens next.
> >
> > Incidentally initiating a call on skype also frigs with the microphone
> > recording settings - reducing the level so that the other party can't
> > hear what I'm saying, but I can't anywhere to configure this.
>
> amixer  is probably what you want here - you can use it to fix the mixer
> as you want it - just discard existing scripts.
>
> As for skype, I think skype uses the OSS sound system, not ALSA. THat
> means that it uses a different interface, and probably requires
> exclusive access to the sound card.


The current version of skype for Linux uses ALSA.


> How about a wrapper script: 
> skypewrapper.sh
>
>
> #!/bin/bash
> alsactl -f levels.tmp store  #save mixer levels
> skype &
> skype_pid=$!		#pid of skype
> sleep 1
> amixer sset [SOMETHING]  #fix the Mic levels.
> wait $skype_pid		#wait for skype to close
> alsactl -f levels.tmp store  #restore mixer levels
>
>
> Or, you could try ekiga instead.
>
> HTH,
>
> Richard


-- 
JP Renaud

http://www.jprenaud.info