Date: Fri, 7 Sep 2007 14:26:10 -0400
From: Mark Grieveson <dg135@torfree.net>
To: debian-user@lists.debian.org
Subject: Re: Unblocking sound card, or adding stream (newbie)

On Fri, 7 Sep 2007 07:54:23 +0000 (UTC)
debian-user-digest-request@lists.debian.org wrote:

> I have a laptop with a sound card that only supports a
> single stream. (People on #debian ed me figure
> this out.) This is annoying not because i want to play
> twelve different sypmhonies at once through high-def
> systems, but just so i can listen to music while
> getting beeps from Gaim, or whatever.
>
> If theres no way to do this, bummer i guess. But my
> problem is that sometimes i seem to have something
> blocking the sound card and i cant figure out what it
> is. I dont THINK im running any sound thing ,but then
> if i try to run xmms i get a "something's blocking
> your sound card" message, or if i play a YouTube video
> i just get no sound at all.
>
> When this happens, how do i find out what's blocking
> hte sound card, and how do i kill this so i can play
> what i want?
>
> Thanks.


Sound on laptops can be tricky. One old laptop I had would not work
with alsa, so I had to enable an oss module on boot up by adding a line
to the /etc/modules file. But I digress.

I'm going to assume that you're using Etch, with alsa for your
soundcard, and that you're using gnome for your desktop environment (if
these assumptions are not correct, then kindly let us know). So, to
get sound working on gaim, and other gnome applications, open
Desktop/Preferences/Sound (from the menu in the top left corner), and,
having opened the Sound Preferences dialogue, check the "Enable
software sound mixing (ESD)" box, along with the "Play system sounds"
box, and then you will have all the bells and whistles that go with the
desktop environment, and its programs. Make sure you have gnome-media
installed.

Yes, this is all correct (Etch, alsa, Gnome). And i'd already checked the ESD box (though i kept the "system sounds" box off, as i dont need to hear this!).

The fact that xmms and/or youtube doesn't give you sound is worrying.
Do you have alsa-base, alsa-oss, alsa-tools, and alsa-utils installed?
If not, install them (via synaptic or aptitude -- aptitude, if you know
what you're doing, is better, but if not, then synaptic is better).
Try restarting your system, to see if sound is set up automatically (it
should). If not, try running "alsaconf" in the terminal as root
(without quotes).

I may have been unclear but its not that i dont get sound from these--its that when one source IS playing sound, then i cant use any of the others, so if i have XMMS playing i cant watch (that is, listen) to YouTube. And then if something that I CANT FIGURE OUT is playing, i cant use any of the others and dont know what to do about it (ie., if i know im listening to XMMS i can stop if i need to watch YouTube but i am getting "sound card in use" messages when i dont think im using anything at all).

Several other people have made suggestions, and i thank you and will try them when i get back to my Debian machine!

Jen


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On Fri, Sep 07, 2007 at 13:45:26 -0700, Dr. Jennifer Nussbaum wrote:

[...]

> I may have been unclear but its not that i dont get sound from
> these--its that when one source IS playing sound, then i cant use any
> of the others, so if i have XMMS playing i cant watch (that is,
> listen) to YouTube. And then if something that I CANT FIGURE OUT is
> playing, i cant use any of the others and dont know what to do about
> it (ie., if i know im listening to XMMS i can stop if i need to watch
> YouTube but i am getting "sound card in use" messages when i dont
> think im using anything at all).

lsof -w /dev/{dsp,snd/*}

or

fuser /dev/{dsp,snd/*}

should show you which processes are blocking the sound devices.

> Several other people have made suggestions, and i thank you and will
> try them when i get back to my Debian machine!
>
> Jen

--
Regards, | http://users.icfo.es/Florian.Kulzer
Florian |


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