[arch-general] Why does my sound work sometimes & not others?

[Damjan Georgievski]

> Working Setup:
>
> [13:46 alchemy:/home/david] # lsof /dev/snd/*
> COMMAND  PID  USER   FD   TYPE DEVICE SIZE/OFF NODE NAME
> kmix    3263 david   10u   CHR 116,10      0t0 4088 /dev/snd/controlC0
>
> [13:48 alchemy:/home/david] # lsof /dev/dsp*
...
>        Now since this mostly Greek concerning the LSI ID and where the Realtek codec
> resides, I'll just have to put it to the list: "Does this look normal?"
> Anything I seem to be missing? Like I said, right now the sound is working,
> so I'll just compare the values/parameters to what I get when it quits again.
> Thanks again for your help.

Everything looks ok.
The important part there is that nothing holds open your sound card
(the output of lsof). The thing to check, when it's not working, is
the same lsof output:

firefox 5424 damjan   18u   CHR  116,4      0t0 4857 /dev/snd/pcmC0D0p

that means firefox (flash actually) has your (p)lay device 0 open on your card 0
that's the most common reason for a non-working sound in Linux, flash
hijacking the sound-card and not playing well with others. As I said,
I now use pulseaudio and don't have that problem.

-- 
damjan