I've been trying to get Rythymbox to play on my computer. Using an OSS driver I got this error message:
-Device "/dev/dsp" does not exist.
(this file does exist and all users have full access)

So I decided to try and get ALSA working, I've loaded up the driver (run alsaconfig and alsamixer) but now I'm trying to work out how to change the default from OSS to ALSA. Something that I'm having some trouble with...

At the moment when I go to use rythymbox, I get the error message:
-OSS Device "/dev/dsp" is already in use by another program (ALSA I assume)

For the record:
I'm using debian (sarge)
My kernal: 2.4.27-2-386

Cheers
Matt

try using fuser to know what processes are using the sound card.

/sbin/fuser /dev/dsp

then /sbin/fuser -k /dev/dsp to kill those processes... Make sure it doesn't kill anything you didn't save.

Yep that worked, however each time I restart the computer I have to run kill the tasks... is there something more permanent that I can do?

Cheers
Matt

I bet your using KDE. In that case, you are using arts, a sorta/kinda soundsystem that processes the data before it's sent to ALSA (or OSS).

Two choices:
Tell all your apps to use arts plugin
Remove the arts soundsystem using the kcontrol application.

Also, you can set the autosuspend on arts to be early, so whenever it's not in use, it can leave other applications not using arts to access alsa directly. (10 seconds is good, there is no bad setting)


Otherwise, tell me what process is using the soundcard, but I'm 85% sure it's arts.

Hmmm sorry about this, I tried to work out how to get an actual description of what the process was that was using /dev/dsp, but couldn't. I'm getting the problem in Gnome...

Anyway, the PID process is: 1141

Does that mean anything to you or is there a way you can tell exactly what it is?

Thanks for all the help!
Matt =)

each reboot it's pretty much a number down or a number up, depending is there is other processes (such as "fsck") that jump in. ps -A will give you the name and number of all processes. Go in kcontrol->sound system and disable arts is you are not going to use KDE's notifications. either that, or make your apps arts aware.

I took a look at the processes, and it was esound using /dev/dsp. I removed it and it looks to be running well!!!

Thanks again!!!
Matt =)

esound? Ah. Maybe you can make Rythymbox to be esound aware, so your system notifications work wether you use Rythymbox or not.

Glad you found the problem and it's fixed