[pulseaudio-discuss] What does "unknown" as a port availability status mean? And how do I get rid of it?

[Tanu Kaskinen]

On Wed, 2012-11-14 at 00:44 +1030, Jordan Windsor wrote:
> ports:
> analog-output: Analog Output (priority 9900, available: unknown)
> properties:
> analog-output-headphones: Headphones (priority 9000, available: yes)
> properties:
> active port: <analog-output-headphones>
> 
> At the bottom you can see the "Analog Output" has it's available
> status set to "unknown", what does this mean & how do I get rid of it?

It means that pulseaudio doesn't know if the port is available or not.
That's not generally something to worry about - you can try to activate
the port to see if it works or not, the "unknown" state only means that
pulseaudio doesn't know if it works or not.

In this case, you seem to have working jack detection for the headphone
jack. If this is a laptop, the other port is probably for the laptop
speakers. It's a good question why pulseaudio doesn't know if the
speakers are available or not. I'm not an expert here, but I think it is
to do with the fact that there's no jack for the laptop speakers of
which state alsa could expose to pulseaudio, and there's no way for
pulseaudio to figure out that the port is for integrated laptop speakers
(which of course are always available).

The problem looks like it should be solvable somehow, but I haven't been
following the related discussions very closely. David probably knows if
there's any work being done to solve this.

-- 
Tanu