VMware Communities: Message List - Failure to open sound /dev/dsp problem (new mystery with old problem)

Re: Failure to open sound /dev/dsp problem (solved)

mingus — Wed, 10 May 2006 05:15:12 GMT

I finally resolved the problem, and it had nothing to do with the VMWare Player. Actually there were a number of overlapping issues; if you are a Linux user getting /dev/dsp errors, look for my post at one of the SuSE user forums. You may need to do more than just the following, as I did:

Basically, use #lsof /dev/snd/* and #fuser /dev/snd/* to determine what programs have *these* sound files open. In my case, because I had turned on KDE's desktop icon preview feature for audio files, the kdesktop program had opened these files; it pipes its preview back through /dev/dsp. Other processes can do the same. They need to be killed to free /dev/dsp. There is a good chance that simply executing as root - #/etc/init.d/alsasound restart - will take care of it for you.

Message was edited by:
mingus

Re: Failure to open sound /dev/dsp problem (new mystery with old problem)

mingus — Thu, 04 May 2006 14:21:51 GMT

No. As indicated above, unable to replicate the problem on my other box (primary sw diff being the default kernel, whereas this box uses the smp). I had a backup SuSE install on my main box hdb; I blew that away yesterday and reinstalled SuSE fresh, which means back to unpatched kernel and KDE 3.4. This time I didn't install arts. I'm gonna install the VMWare and try a controlled restoration to the state on hda, and see if I can trap what change is locking up dsp.

Can you associate when the problem began with any other change to your system?

Re: Failure to open sound /dev/dsp problem (new mystery with old problem)

Keith_Reed — Sat, 29 Apr 2006 04:37:28 GMT

Mingus,
Did you ever find a resolution for this. My SUSE10/Workstation 5.5 system is exhibiting the exact same behavior.

Re: Failure to open sound /dev/dsp problem (new mystery with old problem)

mingus — Mon, 17 Apr 2006 13:33:43 GMT

Sure. Sorry if that wasn't clear - no problem with sound on the KDE host running as user.

Message was edited by:
mingus

Re: Failure to open sound /dev/dsp problem (new mystery with old problem)

nick.couchman — Mon, 17 Apr 2006 13:17:31 GMT

Does the sound device actually work in KDE with a non-root account - that is, can you play sound with something like XMMS?

Failure to open sound /dev/dsp problem (new mystery with old problem)

mingus — Fri, 14 Apr 2006 21:23:48 GMT

There have been a lot of posts with this particular problem, with a variety of causes. I have discovered something on my system that I haven't seen referred to in any other post, perhaps there is a clue here that can help others besides myself . . .

Error msg: "Failure to open sound device /dev/dsp. Device or resource busy" Most suggestions are that the problem is either with (a) arts or esd, or (b) a conflicting application tieing up /dev/dsp.

What I have discovered is that the problem is somehow connected to something that is happening running KDE as a user but not as root. If I open a single session as root, there is no error running vmplayer. If I open two root sessions, there is no conflict. However, if I open a session as the user, then a second session as root and run the player in the root session, I encounter the error. Or if in the user session I run vmplayer with root priviledge, I also get the error.

So it looks as if something is running under the user session that ties up /dev/dsp, right? But I can't find what it is . . .

#fuser /dev/dsp* shows no process using the device
#lsof | grep dsp shows no process opening the file
changing all KDE sound settings incl turning audio I/O or sound system off - no effect
assigning user to all groups, including giving the user root priviledge - no effect
changing the .vmdk and related file permissions - no effect
changing the .vmx file sound statements - no effect
changing permissions to /dev/dsp - no effect

I killed every user process, except the minimum required by KDE (kdeinit, kded, kwin, kdesud, kicker, kdesktop, ksmserver, startkde & kwrapper [under kdm], dbus, dcopserver) - no effect

I should add that when I first installed the player on SuSE 10.0 with KDE 3.4, worked fine. Also works fine on my other box, SuSE 10.0 and KDE 3.5.1 (although not the smp kernel). I just updated my primary box to 3.5.2, no help.

I did not try the vmwaredsp-1.3.tar.gz fix because (a) I saw anothe post indicating it does not work with KDE 3.5 and (b) I don't know how to back it out if it borks something.

I'm stuck. Can any of you experts help???

Thanks in advance.

mingus
VMWare Player (build 19317), SuSE 10.0, KDE 3.5.2, 2.6.13-15.8-smp