Solution(ish)

Apparently dbus is a thing that could be used to change settings. The short version is that the following python script, when ran as root, turns off silent mode:

import dbus session = dbus.SystemBus() proxy = session.get_object('org.freedesktop.Accounts','/org/freedesktop/Accounts/User#####') interface = dbus.Interface(proxy,'org.freedesktop.DBus.Properties') interface.Set('com.ubuntu.touch.AccountsService.Sound','SilentMode',False)

The slightly longer version is:

qdbus --system

Seems to list all the services associated with the system dbus.

qdbus --system org.freedesktop.Accounts

Seems to list the paths associated with that service.

qdbus --system org.freedesktop.Accounts /org/freedesktop/Accounts/User#####

Seems to list all the methods and properties associated with that path (in this case a path to a specific user). This had the following relevant methods:

method QDBusVariant org.freedesktop.DBus.Properties.Get(QString interface_name, QString property_name) method QVariantMap org.freedesktop.DBus.Properties.GetAll(QString interface_name) method void org.freedesktop.DBus.Properties.Set(QString interface_name, QString property_name, QDBusVariant value) method QString org.freedesktop.DBus.Introspectable.Introspect()

Here the GetAll and Set methods require an interface name which we can find out by calling the Introspect function like this:

qdbus --system org.freedesktop.Accounts /org/freedesktop/Accounts/User##### org.freedesktop.DBus.Introspectable.Introspect

Which prints a xml-like document to the screen showing the interface definitions. Getting the silent mode value is done as follows:

qdbus --system org.freedesktop.Accounts /org/freedesktop/Accounts/User##### org.freedesktop.DBus.Properties.Get com.ubuntu.touch.AccountsService.Sound SilentMode