ALSACTL(1)						      General Commands Manual							ALSACTL(1)

NAME

       alsactl - advanced controls for ALSA soundcard driver

SYNOPSIS

       alsactl [options] [store|restore|init] <card # or id or device>

DESCRIPTION

       alsactl	is  used  to  control advanced settings for the ALSA soundcard drivers. It supports multiple soundcards. If your card has features
       that you can't seem to control from a mixer application, you have come to the right place.

COMMANDS

       store saves the current driver state for the selected soundcard to the configuration file.

       restore loads driver state for the selected soundcard from the configuration file. If restoring fails (eventually partly), the init  action
       is called.

       init tries to initialize all devices to a default state. If device is not known, error code 99 is returned.

       If no soundcards are specified, setup for all cards will be saved or loaded.

OPTIONS

       -h, --help
	      Help: show available flags and commands.

       -d, --debug
	      Use debug mode: a bit more verbose.

       -v, --version
	      Print alsactl version number.

       -f, --file
	      Select the configuration file to use. The default is /etc/asound.state.

       -F, --force
	      Used with restore command.  Try to restore the matching control elements as much as possible.  This option is set as default now.

       -g, --ignore
	      Used  with  store  and restore commands. Do not show 'No soundcards found' and do not set an error exit code when soundcards are not
	      installed.

       -P, --pedantic
	      Used with restore command.  Don't restore mismatching control elements.  This option was the old default behavior.

       -I, --no-init-fallback
	      Don't initialize cards if restore fails.	Since version 1.0.18, alsactl tries to initialize the card with the restore  operation	as
	      default.	 But  this  can cause incompatibility with the older version.  The caller may expect that the state won't be touched if no
	      state file exists.  This option takes the restore behavior back to the older version by suppressing the initialization.

       -r, --runstate
	      Save restore and init state to this file. The file will contain only errors.  Errors are appended with the soundcard id to  the  end
	      of file.

       -R, --remove
	      Remove runstate file at first.

       -E, --env #=#
	      Set environment variable (useful for init action or you may override ALSA_CONFIG_PATH to read different or optimized configuration -
	      may be useful for "boot" scripts).

       -i, --initfile #=#
	      The configuration file for init. By default, PREFIX/share/alsa/init/00main is used.

FILES

       /etc/asound.state (or whatever file you specify with the -f flag) is used to store current  settings  for  your	soundcards.  The  settings
       include	all  the  usual  soundcard  mixer settings.  More importantly, alsactl is capable of controlling other card-specific features that
       mixer apps usually don't know about.

       The configuration file is generated automatically by running alsactl store. Editing the configuration file by hand  may	be  necessary  for
       some soundcard features (e.g. enabling/disabling automatic mic gain, digital output, joystick/game ports, some future MIDI routing options,
       etc).

SEE ALSO

	amixer(1), alsamixer(1), aplay(1)

BUGS

       None known.

AUTHOR

       alsactl is  by  Jaroslav  Kysela  <perex@perex.cz>  and	Abramo	Bagnara  <abramo@alsa-project.org>.  This  document  is  by  Paul  Winkler
       <zarmzarm@erols.com>.

								    15 May 2001 							ALSACTL(1)