User can't run xmms despite permission setup

[brownh@hartford-hwp.com (Haines Brown)]

Kind of a FAQ, but doing what I thought to be the right thing has
gotten me nowhere. I'm running kernel 2.6.8 with Sarge, and am using a
Creative Labs Gamer sound card (onboard audio diabled in BIOS). ALSA
and alsamixer seem to be working properly and were installed as deb
packages. I'm not using udev. The modules (including snd_10k1) are
loaded, although with kernel 2.6.8 I have longer have soundconf.

I find that root can run xmms test.mp3, but not user. When user tries, 
I get:

  $ xmms test.mp3
  Message: device: default

  ** WARNING **: alsa_get_mixer(): Attaching to mixer hw:0 failed: 
	Permission denied
  ALSA lib confmisc.c:550:(snd_determine_driver) could not open control 
	for card 0
  ALSA lib conf.c:3461:(_snd_config_evaluate) function
	snd_func_card_driver returned error: Permission denied
  ALSA lib confmisc.c:387:(snd_func_concat) error evaluating strings
  ALSA lib conf.c:3461:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_concat 
	returned error: Permission denied
  ALSA lib confmisc.c:945:(snd_func_refer) error evaluating name
  ALSA lib conf.c:3461:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_refer 
	returned error: Permission denied
  ALSA lib conf.c:3930:(snd_config_expand) Evaluate error: Permission 
	denied
  ALSA lib pcm.c:2068:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM default

  ** WARNING **: alsa_setup(): Failed to open pcm device (default): 
	Permission denied

This is classic symptom of user not being in audio group or /dev/dsp
or /dev/mixer not having open 666 permission. The "debian way" is to
give the device interfaces a 660 permission and to have users added to
the audio group. However, the default set up did not add users to the
audio group. Why not, if that's the debian way?

I found that to run gxine I had to use permission 666 for /dev/dsp0,
even though I had put user into the audio group. I should not have had
to have done that.

When it came to xmms, however, this approach didn't work, and only
root can play a mp3 file with xmms, despite /dev/dsp1 and /dev/mixer
having 666 permisions.

-- 
 
       Haines Brown
       KB1GRM