Tag Archives: no headphones

Restarting the Linux sound subsystem

Sometimes my laptop gets to a state in which sound works through the built-in speakers, but not through the headphone jack. Possibly my solution is too brutal, but it works -  restarting the whole sound subsystem. I guess that it may come handy in other situation: the ability to restart a subsystem instead of rebooting the machine, is always an advantage.

The rationale is simply reloading the kernel module that acts as a driver to our sound hardware. Reloading isn't easy, as:

  1. Kernel modules use this module.
  2. User processes use this module.

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