I know this has been asked before, but I havn't found anything to solve my issue in those posts.

I'm running GAIM on SuSE 9.0... in the config, under Tools/Preferences/Sounds, I have
Method=Command or Console Beep
Sound Command=[blank]

Right now it's on console beep, and I can't seem to get it to just play sounds normally. All other programs on the system play sounds fine (and concurrently). Unfortunately, my console beep is very low, so I need the sounds.

Does anyone know how to configure this to play sounds normally?

Are you running any desktop sound daemons? Disable them. Ive had the same problem when compiling from source, but when I used binaries, the sound was fine. It seems to me that Gaim doesnt have stellar sound detection .

How can I tell what sound daemons I'm running? I've used linux as a server for years now, but the whole gui way of doing things is new to me... I'm trying it as my desktop OS

This is a binary installation of GAIM.

Under "System/Personal Settings/Sound Preferences", I have "Start the sound server when I log in"... if I uncheck that, I get no sound from anything.
In YaST2, it lists my sound card correctly, but only gives me advanced options.\
Besides those, I don't see any sound settings anywhere.

I'm running Ximian on top of Gnome, if that helps any.

Bump?

You could use the command option, and for the sound command use

play /path/to/sound/file

or

aplay /path/to/sound/file

I have used Gaim with SuSE 9.0 and not had your problem, have you tried the package from

http://guru.unixtech.be/index.php

That got the sounds working
Thanks

just wanted to say thanks, this got my sound working find, I run suse 10.1 and the command was "play" for me.