I am running redhat 9 and have everything almost sorted out.

The problem is that the xmms Esound plugin releases the sound between songs and the instance of esd dies, then gets restarted when a new song comes in. The problem is that sometimes, the new song comes in before esd is done releasing the /dev/dsp, resulting in no more audio and an error message that says my soundcard is in use.

I've tried running esd as a persistant program (open in a terminal window from gnome and leave it on an unused desktop). This does not work, as xmms starts up a new copy, which overrides my old settings, and makes it so it dies when programs release all sound that it is controlling.

This is annoying me, as randomly, the soundcard does not work. While xmms is playing, I do get 2 sounds (gaim makes noise)

Any ideas on how to make esd stick around?

-Chris