artodeto's blog about coding, politics and the world

You want to start blockify-ui or blockify on a pulseaudio served arch linux and get the following error?

amixer: Mixer attach default error: No such file or directory
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/bin/blockify-ui", line 11, in <module>
    load_entry_point('blockify==3.6.3', 'gui_scripts', 'blockify-ui')()
  File "/usr/lib/python3.6/site-packages/blockify/gui.py", line 972, in main
    _cli = cli.initialize(__doc__)
  File "/usr/lib/python3.6/site-packages/blockify/cli.py", line 597, in initialize
    cli = Blockify(_blocklist)
  File "/usr/lib/python3.6/site-packages/blockify/cli.py", line 63, in __init__
    self.channels = self.initialize_channels()
  File "/usr/lib/python3.6/site-packages/blockify/cli.py", line 184, in initialize_channels
    amixer_output = subprocess.check_output("amixer")
  File "/usr/lib/python3.6/subprocess.py", line 336, in check_output
    **kwargs).stdout
  File "/usr/lib/python3.6/subprocess.py", line 418, in run
    output=stdout, stderr=stderr)
subprocess.CalledProcessError: Command 'amixer' returned non-zero exit status 1.

Try to call "amixer" first and check the output. The chance is high that it will be something like the follow:

amixer: Mixer attach default error: No such file or directory

How to fix this?

Install the following tools: * extra/pulseaudio-alsa * extra/alsa-utils * extra/alsa-plugins * extra/alsa-lib

After that, amixer should output something meaningful and blockify should work as expected.