I have seen that this is a common problem, but I can't fix it the way that seems normal:

On loading KDE, I get a message that there was an "Error while initializing the sound driver: device /dev/dsp can't be opened (Permission denied)"

This is a single-user system, but as I'm learning, I have a few accounts.

I had this problem a couple days ago, and realized that somehow the owner on a bunch of my devices in /dev/ were changed to one of my users (I still can't figure out how that happened), so I went through and fixed them, changing the owner to root when applicable. Then I made an audio group, and did chown root.audio on the following devices:

/dev/audio
/dev/audio1
/dev/audioctl
/dev/dsp

That fixed it. Wonderful. It worked great until tonight, when I logged in as a different user, and had the same problem--somehow the owner/group went back to root/root for these devices...upon changing them back, I still get the error message. I am quite confused. How can these permissions be changed when I'm not changing them?

Another question, what exactly are the correct owners/groups for most files in /dev/ ?

Thanks for any help--

-Marc

PAM, that's how. look at /etc/security/console.perms (i think) and edit if you wish to lower the securtiy to the relevant device groups.

There's a file there...I don't exactly know how to edit it. Funny thing though, this morning things work again. Sometimes I'm amazed...Thanks--

-Marc