vol

#!/bin/bash

# this assumes you have amixer and notify-send installed:
# sudo apt-get install alsa-utils libnotify-bin

# this is guaranteed to work on MY system, which is ubuntu
# 11.04 with pulseaudio (the default). if anything is likely
# to change on your system, it's gonna be the name of the 
# channel you want to affect.

# if you don't want the notifications, just comment out all
# lines with notify-send :)

# put this in ~/bin/ and run 
# chmod +x ~/bin/vol
# to make it executable, and hopefully loaded up from your 
# $PATH so that it can be accessed from everywhere.

if [ $1 = "mute" ]
then
    amixer set Master mute
    notify-send "Volume muted"
elif [ $1 = "unmute" ]
then
    amixer set Master unmute
    notify-send "Volume unmuted"
elif [ $1 = "up" ]
then
    str=`amixer set Master 5+`
    vol=`echo $str| awk '{print $22}'`
    notify-send "Volume $vol"
elif [ $1 = "down" ]
then
    str=`amixer set Master 5-`
    vol=`echo $str| awk '{print $22}'`
    notify-send "Volume $vol"
else
    str=`amixer set Master $1`
    vol=`echo $str| awk '{print $22}'`
    notify-send "Volume $vol"
fi