Ubuntu 12.04 alsamixer not found

I have a Lenovo Y500 with Windows 8. I successfully got Ubuntu 12.04 installed alongside Windows 8 and the nvidia drivers just worked from the start. The sound wasn't working at all however, and although alsamixer was alive and well when I started out, I seemed to have completely destroyed it now.

I keep getting:

$ alsamixer
cannot open mixer: No such file or directory

Kernel version:

$ uname -a
Linux laptop 3.5.0-28-generic #48~precise1-Ubuntu SMP Wed Apr 24 21:42:24 UTC 2013 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

I've tried both of the following packages from https://code.launchpad.net/~ubuntu-audio-dev/+archive/alsa-daily/+packages:

oem-audio-hda-daily-dkms - 0.201305101424~precise1
oem-audio-hda-daily-lts-quantal-dkms - 0.201305101424~precise1

but to no avail.

This is the output of my alsa-info:

http://www.alsa-project.org/db/?f=09851ab8c4380c25feaea7ff1de68d847bd4160c

I've tried many other solutions as well but nothing seems to get alsamixer back, nevermind trying to get the audio to work again.

PS. when alsamixer was still working I did check the levels and it was not a case of the channels being muted.

Edit

1. /usr/bin is in $PATH.
2. no asound rc or conf files anywhere.
3. alsamixer is in /usr/bin, can't run it as alsamixer, /usr/bin/alsamixer not with sudo, even after purging and re-installing alsa-utils.

Edit 2

$ ls /dev/mixer -l
ls: cannot access /dev/mixer: No such file or directory
$ ls /usr/bin -l | grep alsamixer
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root   root       65344 Mar 28 23:54 alsamixer
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root   root       61272 Dec 18  2011 gnome-alsamixer

Edit 3

$ ls /dev/snd -l
ls: cannot access /dev/snd: No such file or directory

Solution 1:

Firts of all, you should check if you have /usr/bin directory in your $PATH in terminal with:

echo $PATH

If the $PATH is ok, check if alsamixer is there:

ls -l /usr/bin | grep alsamixer

If yes, try to run alsamixer like this:

/usr/bin/alsamixer

If still doesn't work delete .asoundrc file (in your home directory) and /etc/asound.conf (if you have them) and reinstall alsa-utils:

sudo apt-get remove --purge alsa-utils
sudo apt-get install alsa-utils

Solution 2:

I hit this error and solved it by adding myself to the audio group.

sudo addgroup <username> audio

Log out and back in, then test.

Solution 3:

I had the same problem and it happened while the sound card (ALC662) was disabled in BIOS. Enabling it, allowed me to start alsamixer. I hope it helps.

Solution 4:

For me using the -c parameter worked

alsamixer -c 1

but I'm on 16.04