I'm fairly new to Linux and trying it out on an old spare machine.
I am running Debian 3.0-r0 (Woody) with Kernel 2.4.18-bf24.
KDE Version 2.2.2.

The hardware generally works quite well, however I am unable to get the sound to work.

When I boot into KDE, 2.2.2 I get one of the following two error messages:

Error: cannot load /dev/dsp, /dev/dsp not found
Error: cannot access /dev/dsp, device or resource busy

This occurs whether I log on as root or a user.

Also, the KDE sound server crashes if settings in Control Centre>Sound>Sound Server are changed and the server restarted, or when the "Test Sound" button is clicked.

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Here are the basic specs of the machine:

Intel Pentium-166 MMX
64MB RAM
PC-Chips M507 mobo w/ onboard graphics and sound:
Graphics = SiS 5597/5598 PCI 4MB
xx SOUND = Cmedia 8330 ISA-PNP device xx
(etc etc....)

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The following is the contents of /etc/modules.conf:

binfmt_misc
binfmt_aout
cpuid
imm
lp
gameport
analog
ns558
keybdev
mousedev
joydev
sb
cmpci
apm
msr
smbfs
ipx
ppp_generic
ppp_synctty

As you can see, both the Soundblaster module "sb" and the Cmedia module "cmpci" are there, as I was very careful to load these as modules upon installation.
I therefore see no reason to recompile the kernel.

The isapnp module appears to be detecting the card fine according to the kernel log:

isapnp: Scanning for PnP cards...
isapnp: Calling quirk for 01:03
isapnp: CMI8330 quirk - fixing interrupts and dma
isapnp: Card 'CMI8330. Audio Adapter'
isapnp: 1 Plug & Play card detected total

The following is the kernel log generated for the sb and cmpci modules:

sb: CMI8330. Audio Adapter detected
sb: ISAPnP reports 'CMI8330. Audio Adapter' at i/o 0x220, irq 5, dma 1, 5
SB 4.13 detected OK (220)
sb: 1 SoundBlaster PnP card(s) found
cmpci: version $Revision: 5.64 $ time (...etc etc)

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Checking cat /proc/interrupts reveals no conflicts/sharing, and the sound only has one entry:


5: 8193 XT-PIC soundblaster

Checking cat /proc/dma reveals no problems either (this is the entire output):

1: SoundBlaster8
4: cascade
5: SoundBlaster 16

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I have also applied the following commands:

chmod 777 /dev/dsp
chmod 777 /dev/mixer (changing file permissions for devices)
ls -s /dev/dsp /dev/sound (an attempt to get sound working as recommended on a different site)

/dev/dsp and /dev/mixer appear to be there most of the time, but occasionally are lost.

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I have edited /etc/group file and changed the "audio" line as follows:

audio:x:29user) to add my user account to the audio permissions

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ls -l /dev/dsp reveals the following:
crwxrwxrwx 1 root audio 14, 3 Mar 14 2002 /dev/dsp

ls-l /dev/mixer reveals exactly the same.

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lsof /dev/dsp reveals the following process running all the time:
COMMAND PID USER FD TYPE DEVICE SIZE NODE NAME
artsd 399 root 7u CHR 14,3 744631 /dev/dsp

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If anyone has any ideas why the sound is not working, based on the above information, please let me know.
I hope that the problem is obvious to a more experienced linux user, I have tried to explain what I have done and checked and what I have tried to do. Are there any potential conflicts with modules or the ORDER of modules in /etc/modules?

Is it a problem with artsd being run all the time and stopping other processes from accessing the sound, or a kde/artsd config problem or kernel config problem??

Any information about how artsd works or other ways to configure the sound would be gratefully received, along with other things to check: I have only checked the above, based upon help pages on the internet.

Thankyou in advance for any help,
Tom