Hi, im having this problem, and i cant find anything on the forums...
Im running kde 3.4 and using the switch user funcionality. Everything works fine until i try to use the sound device, which is already "owned" by the first user to log in...
Is there a way to allow multiple users to access a device at the same time?, i now about the artsdsp way... but that'll do for different programs accesing the device, but when it cmes to users i dont know if theres a way using artsdsp...

All users are in the audio group and all can access sound independently (being the first one to log in)... also permissons of /dev/dsp are well setted (660)...

can anyone help?

btw: im running gentoo linux kernel 2.6 with devfs

i'm having the exact same problem with ubuntu hoary. i would greatly appreciate it anyone share any ideas they might have.

The KDE sound system takes exclusive control over audio hardware. U have to set auto-suspend if idle (Control Center @ Sound System) to 2 secs and ,before u switch user, u stop ALL the apps that use sound (audio/video players). When the second user is logged on the the audio system of the first user is suspended

Has any one got a better fix? I have just upgraded to SuSE 9.3 and KDE 3.4 and have this same problem. Previous installation (9.1 + 3.2) allowed more than one user to access the sound card simultaneously. I can't get the kids to log out of their sound apps when I want to play sound!

Using SuSE 9.3 + KDE 3.4 I can get users simultaneous sound access by writing the following into /etc/profile.local

chmod 770 /dev/dsp
chmod 770 /dev/midi
chmod 770 /dev/amidi
chmod 770 /dev/adsp
chmod 770 /dev/mixer
chmod -R 770 /dev/snd

All my users are members of group 'audio' and the chmods above give group 'audio' read/write to the sound devices instead of just the user who opens the devices.

HTH