Followup on "KDE suddenly turns to syrup"

[Alan Chandler <alan@chandlerfamily.org.uk>]

There was a thread about a week ago with this title.  I have only just 
subscribed (again - had been unsubscribed for about a month) and noticed this 
when looking at the problem I have.

I was running standard debian kernel-image-2.6.2-1-k7 and kde/sound was 
working fine (kde3.2 from experimental).  I upgraded to 
kernel-image-2.6.3-1-k7 and all of a sudden this syrup effect happened as I 
was starting up kde.  It would last for a few minutes, but then clear away 
and not be a problem.

I took this to be a sound problem with the new release of the kernel - and 
have filed a bug report on it, especially as I was able to switch between the 
the two versions of the kernel and see the effect come and go.

However, at some point I must have screwed with something because now I can't 
get sound to work properly.

Log in as root, and sound for the startup and shutdown notifications work 
fine.  Login as me (and I am a member of the audio group) and I get no sound 
out of kde.  At least I get no start up or shut down notification, and going 
into kcontrol and trying to play the wave files given for the system 
notification results in silence.  However, I can, for instance, use juk to 
play my mp3 files without a problem.

I get this message in my .xsession-errors file

kmixctrl: ERROR: Alsa mixer cannot be found.
Please check that the soundcard is installed and the
soundcard driver is loaded.
kmixctrl:
kmixctrl: ERROR: Alsa mixer cannot be found.
Please check that the soundcard is installed and the
soundcard driver is loaded.
kmixctrl:

but I know that is all loaded and working - and the permissions on 
all /dev/<sound stuff> writable by audio group of which I am a member.

Anyone out there any ideas on what is going wrong here?


-- 
Alan Chandler
alan@chandlerfamily.org.uk