Thanks for the suggestions, Nigel.
Nigel Henry wrote:
> On Thursday 28 June 2007 12:08, Chris Lale wrote:
>> Some of my Etch sound apps have stopped working: Audacity, RealPlayer 10,
>> XMMS. Others continue to work OK: gxine, mplayer, VLC Media Player.
>
> Hi Chris. Is this [...] an existing install, and some have just stopped
> working? [...]
Yes. The apps have stopped working on my desktop machine.
[...]
> Seems like something has grabbed the soundcard, and won't let go. You could
> try disabling ESD, Gnomes sound daemon, if you're using Gnome, or aRTs sound
> server if you're using KDE. They are often responsible for this sort of
> problem.
Both esd and arts are disabled and there are no processes for either.
>
>> I can fix XMMS by changing the output plugin from OSS to ALSA (right-click
>> -> Options -> Preferences -> Output Plugin. This should not be necessary -
>> my Etch laptop works perfectly through ALSA with the Output Plugin set to
>> OSS.
>>
>> I can fix RealPlayer and Audacity by installing alsa-oss and running them
>> from a terminal using "aoss realplay" and "aoss audacity". I am sure that
>> this should not be necessary either.
>
> I always install alsa-oss as a matter of course, and didn't think that
> RealPlayer would work without it, as it's an OSS app. Same goes for Audacity
> IIRC.
The above fixes work for the affected desktop machine. On my laptop alsa-oss is
not installed. Nevertheless, Audacity loads and plays files. I have installed
realplayer and
it worked first time.
>
> Does running ps auxw show anything using the sound. Some daemon or other?
No oss or arts daemons. Nothing else related to sound that I can see.
>
> Over to you.
Both machines have Etch up to date.
The laptop has /dev/dsp, the affected desktop does not. Perhaps this device is
needed by alsa for the affected applications? I tried to create the device with
# cd /dev; ./MAKEDEV -v sound
but the command created the devices in /dev/.static/dev/ because udev is active.
Both machines have udev. Is there another way to create /dev/dsp?
--
Chris.
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