My hardware is a Toshiba P20-S303, the distribution is openSuse 10.3 (Linux 2.6.22.16-0.2-default i686) and I use KDE (3.5.7 "release 72.6").
Sometimes the sound doesn't work. The only message I get about this is when I try to play a video with Mplayer: "[AO OSS] audio_setup: Can't open audio device /dev/dsp: Device or resource busy".
When I'm lucky after rebooting everything works again.
Is there an easy way of restarting the sound module without rebooting?
Thanks for your hints!
Antonio Almeida

Do you have two sound/music software running at the same time?
One software might lock the sound card for it's use. Some applications accept to share resources other don't ...

ALSA is usually used in Linux to output. You can restart alsa by doing:
alsa-utils is a init.d startup script which brings alsa up when the OS boots.
If the sound system is working then it quits then most likely you have a software that's causing alsa to hang up.

Every time immediately after the start I check if the Mplayer fails and shows the warning on the sound device or not. Sometimes it does and sometimes not, so I don't see which other programme could be running after the start. I also checked in Yast and couldn't find any other sound programme but alsa. I've just tried to run the instruction "/etc/init.d/alsa-utils restart" but I always get the message "-bash: /etc/init.d/alsa-utils: No such file or directory". I also tried in vain to find it in other directories. Yast definitely shows alsa-utils version 1.0.14-27 to be installed.
Do you have another hint?
Cheers,
Antonio

OpenSUSE might name the script that reboots alsa differently. Please do this:
Then try to look for a reference to alsa. You have to excute the script from within that folder with a restart switch. The way you do that is:

where the question marks stand for whatever the name of the script is.

It looks like Mplayer for some reason is locking up your sound card. I would also view the file /var/log/messages in a text editor and see if there is any error messages or warnings coming from Mplayer. That might give you an idea.

Wow! That's it! The programme is "alfasound" and the "restart" switch does work!
Many thanks!
Antonio