Re: sound stopped and now working. what happened?

[Johann Spies <jspies@sun.ac.za>]

On Mon, Sep 19, 2011 at 10:52:14AM +0200, Julien Claassen wrote:
>    You still have ALSA. I don't know, when you last looked through your kernel 
> modules, but I never had a module named ALSA. The snd and soundcore modules 
> are what you need.
>    When you say speaker-test, of which speaker-test are we talking?
>    To me the whole problem looks to be a KDE one. If I remember correctly, KDE 
> uses PulseAudio, which has noted to be a problem at times. Well amongst 
> musicians at least. :-) Me only once having used a GUI before and now just 
> restarting, but with GNOME, I could't tell you about the exact nature of 
> problems you can expect. I'm not even sure if PulseAudio is capable of 
> blocking an ALSA device in a normal system. (you might circumvent such things 
> in any case with .asoundrc files, but that a totally different pocket full of 
> rats).
>    Still I hope, that all this might go somewhat towards explaining your 
> problem or at least getting some light into the darkness.
>    Kind regards

Unfortunately I did not follow this thread from the beginning.  I
sometimes get a situation that (mostly after Firefox used some sound
file) my normal music player like Banshee does not make any sound.

I have, with help from this list and elsewhere put the following script
in ~/bin:
--------------------------
#!/bin/bash

for i in /dev/snd/*; do echo $i; sudo lsof $i; done
--------------------------

This identifies for me the process that keep the sound device busy.
Killing those processes - usually the ones where pulseaudio is involved
- restores my sound.

Regards
Johann

-- 
Johann Spies                            Telefoon: 021-808 4699
Databestuurder /  Data manager

Sentrum vir Navorsing oor Evaluasie, Wetenskap en Tegnologie
Centre for Research on Evaluation, Science and Technology 
Universiteit Stellenbosch.

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