The i3 window manager and the Thinkpad X1 Carbon multimedia keys

I switched to a new laptop, and noticed that the volume down key stopped working. I had rsynced all the files in my home dir to the new laptop, and it turns out one of these needs a tiny change.

In the i3 window manager, this setting:

pactl set-sink-volume 0 -- -5%

no longer worked. But this:

pactl set-sink-volume 0 -5%

does. The difference is two dashes.

Earlier, I detailed how to get the multimedia keys working on a Thinkpad 400s, when using the i3 window manager. For the Thinkpad Carbon X1 (1st Generation) I simply removed the two dashes.

# audio soft keys
bindsym XF86AudioRaiseVolume exec --no-startup-id pactl set-sink-volume 0 +5%
bindsym XF86AudioLowerVolume exec --no-startup-id pactl set-sink-volume 0 -5%
bindsym XF86AudioMute exec --no-startup-id pactl set-sink-mute 0 toggle
bindsym XF86AudioMicMute exec --no-startup-id pactl set-source-mute 1 toggle

There are a few other Linux users who experience similar issues, running ArchLinux, Debian or Ubuntu. Check for local configuration files.