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

[David Henningsson]

On 11/13/2012 06:56 PM, Tanu Kaskinen wrote:
> 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.

My guess is a desktop, with line out on the rear and headphones in the 
front.

We currently don't have any dedicated "Line out" port, so "Analog 
output" is the generic fallback.

> 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.

Having an "unknown" port is nothing to worry about. But next step would 
probably be to add an "Line Out" path. (Post 3.0 release, as we're 
currently frozen.)

-- 
David Henningsson, Canonical Ltd.
https://launchpad.net/~diwic