SDL sound not working (ALSA, kernel 2.6.1)

[Dan Lenski <lenski@umd.edu>]

I am running Debian unstable with kernel 2.6.1 and having trouble
getting sound output to work with programs that use SDL.  I have
installed the libsdl1.2-debian package.

Alsa sound output works fine from xmms or through gstreamer.  But no
luck with SDL.  I have scoured the web for info on this and haven't come
up with anything that works.  One guy
(http://www.tfug.org/pipermail/tfug/2003-November/005312.html) found
that he could get it to work by symlinking to /dev/dsp, but this didn't
work for me.

On my system, I am wondering if maybe /dev/dsp is messed up.  If I try
to start up esd, for example, it says "/dev/dsp: no such device".  And
yet alsa sound works fine in other programs.  Has anybody had this kind
of problem with SDL, and can help me to fix it?  Thanks for your advice.

Dan Lenski

Also, here is some example output from SDL programs (I tried oss driver
as well, but that didn't work):

$ SDL_DEBUG=true SDL_AUDIODRIVER=alsa zsnes
[...]
SDL_SetError: No available audio device
Sound init failed!
freq: 22050, channels: 2, samples: 512
ZSNES could not find any joysticks.

$ SDL_DEBUG=true SDL_AUDIODRIVER=alsa vectoroids
SDL_SetError: No available audio device

Warning: I could not set up audio for 22050 Hz 16-bit stereo.
The Simple DirectMedia error that occured was:
No available audio device


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