Backup backup backup -- sound problem SOLVED using a backup

I was playing a music track while using XBMC when suddenly the sound
stopped. I tried everything I could to restore sound. None of my
multimedia programs produced sound. Even speaker-test produced nothing.

I tried rebooting, purge xbmc from the system: nothing.

Well, this morning, I unpacked my latest backup of my directory tree
into /var/tmp and issued the command
diff -q -u -r /home/sian /var/tmp/home/sian >/tmp/sian.diff
The command ran for a few seconds. Looking at /tmp/sian.diff showed no
obvious reason why I no longer had sound.

So, I logged out of KDE4 Plasma Desktop, keyed Ctrl-Alt-F1 and, at the
VT, logged in as root. Then I issued the commands
init 3 # that stopped kdm and X
rm -rf /home/sian # deleted all my files
rm -rf /var/tmp/home # deleted the files I had put into /var/tmp
tar -xjf /opt/cdrw/bd21319-04-25/Phoenicia.sian.tar.bz2 --directory /
# That tar command extracted all the files from the backup and put them
# into their proper places (each file was preceded by home/sian because
# tar removes the initial /
I then did the usual sid upgrade commands:
apt-get update
apt-get dist-upgrade
reboot
After the reboot, I logged in and ran speaker-test:
speaker-test -tsine -c2
Sound from both speakers!
played some music using Deadbeef (Audio player)

So there you are: a backup saved my bacon.
Sian Mountbatten
ex-Algol 68 specialist


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