Tag: Linux

Under some conditions, there can be repeated, clearly audible “clicks” in sound on at least Debian 10 and 11 (Buster and Bullseye) GNU/Linux, accompanied by momentary audio output device switches. Web searches indicate that other distributions (at least Debian derivatives) are affected as well; I have been able to locate cases where Ubuntu and Mint users have both been affected by this type of issue.

I haven’t dug very deeply into exactly why this happens, but it seems to be somehow related to ALSA port availability changes; which is kind of odd when it happens without any changes in what hardware is available.

The fix, however, is actually quite simple. Open /etc/pulse/default.pa in an editor running as root:

$ sudo nano /etc/pulse/default.pa

Locate the line

load-module module-switch-on-port-available

Prepend a # to comment it out:

#load-module module-switch-on-port-available

Save the file and exit the editor (in nano, by pressing Ctrl+O, confirm saving, then Ctrl+X to exit), then under the user account suffering from this problem, stop the running PulseAudio daemon.

$ pulseaudio --kill

A new PulseAudio instance should start as soon as it is needed, reading the new configuration as it does so.

This should resolve the issue.

Debian Bullseye ships with the Linux Vendor Firmware Service (LVFS) fwupdmgr enabled by default.

There are many situations in which that’s a good thing; firmware is a central part of today’s hardware and software ecosystem, and you generally want to use the latest version available.

However, even though (supposedly; I haven’t yet been in a situation to actually experience this) actual updates need to be triggered manually, there are situations in which you want to reduce polling of external systems – especially when such polling could be used to deduce whether you have a particular piece of hardware or not.

Fortunately, it’s easy to disable the automatic checks in Debian. Simply enough:

sudo systemctl mask fwupd-refresh.timer

(For some reason, it is insufficient to simply disable the timer.)

You can still perform a manual check when appropriate by simply starting the unit that would normally be started by the timer:

sudo systemctl start fwupd-refresh.service

To see the result of the check, look at the unit log:

sudo journalctl --unit=fwupd-refresh.service