I downloaded a handy egg-timer utility that rings when the time lapses. But if I am listening to something else then the utility errors out because the sound card is busy. Is there a simple way I can reset the sound card via software?

Thanks.

Linux has 2 major sound systems: OSS and ALSA. OSS is older so you probably want ALSA and probably do not want anything using OSS. Assuming you are using ALSA drivers, different apps can interface with it directly or still use OSS. For example, the XMMS player settings can be set to use OSS or ALSA for output. So, if you are using ALSA drivers and if all your apps are programmed or configured to use ALSA then you should not have this problem. So, is the egg timer a KDE app? or Window Maker?? If using KDE, I'm guessing it uses "arts" which I believe can be configured to use ALSA. Then you have to configure your other apps to use ALSA too depending on what environment they were designed for.

Perhaps I did not state my problem clearly. The timer program works just fine, except that when I am using the sound card with another program it produces the following error:-

ALSA lib pcm_dmix.c:864snd_pcm_dmix_open) unable to open slave
aplay: main:550: audio open error: Device or resource busy

What I would like to do via software is to reset (turn off) the sound card just before the timer needs access to it. Perhaps to turn it back on after the timer sounds. The timer by the way is neither a KDE or Window Maker application. It is a command line application.

You can give it a try with this command line using a console terminal

chmod 666 /dev/audio* /dev/dsp* /dev/sequencer /dev/mid* /dev/mixer*