[Hoary] Sound problems

[ZIYAD A. M. AL-BATLY]

On Sun, 2005-02-27 at 15:05 +0000, Eamonn Sullivan wrote:
>I ran into an odd problem this week after upgrading to Hoary. My wife,
>who doesn't use Ubuntu that much, logged into her account and didn't
>have sound.
>
>To get sound working on mine, I had to do the trick I picked up on the
>list of disabling the sound server, logging out and saving settings,
>and then logging in again and enabling the sound server. I also made
>sure that I had ESD chosen in Preferences/Multimedia chooser (whatever
>it's called -- as usual, when I have time to send a message to the
>list, I'm not in front of my computer -- I'm waiting for a Eurostar
>from London to Brussels and using a public terminal.)
>
>It didn't work with my wife. Furthermore, under
>Preferences/Multimedia, if she chooses ESD, the test doesn't work. She
>was able to choose ALSA, however, which at least provided the ability
>to play Rhythmbox. But now only one app at a time can use sound.
>
>It's an odd problem because both of our accounts were created at the
>same time -- when I first installed Warty months ago. What do I have
>to do to get polypaudio/ESD working under her id?
>
>-Eamonn
>

Is the other user(s) (including your wife) part of the "audio" group?

At a shell prompt, Try:
        groups username

To add a user to another group, run the following at a shell:
        sudo adduser username groupname

Or:
        From "System" > "Administration" > "Users and Groups"
        Choose the user you want to change groups for
        Click "Properties"
        Go to "User privileges" tab
        And check: "Use audio devices"

Or:
        From "System" > "Administration" > "Users and Groups"
        Go to "Groups" tab
        check "Show all users and groups" at the bottom of the window
        Choose "audio" group
        Click "Properties"
        Highlight the user you want to add the "audio" group
        Click "Add"

I hope that helps you.
Ziyad.