/dev/dsp Permission Denied

[Chanchao]

Hello Troy,

Thursday, June 16, 2005, 8:14:04 PM, you wrote:

TD> If I log in as my user, who setup KUbuntu on my box, I have sound and
TD> it works fine in all apps.

TD> But, I have users for my wife and son.  They log in and get a message
TD> saying something like "can't use audio.  /dev/dsp (Permission
TD> Denied)".  I look at /dev/dsp and it is RW for Root and Audio.

I've had this before.

First of all, you don't need the command line to make sure your users
have sound (or can open the CD tray for starters :)  In the User
management app you can click on a user and get a list of stuff that
users can or cannot do.  Just check the checkboxes on the things you
want them to have.  (Personally I think audio should be on by default
for a system like Ubuntu)

(Likely, internally what that panel does is add folks to an audio
group of course)

HOWEVER, I never had the /dev/dsp error just because a user didn't
have access to audio.   I DID get this error in certain software that
can't handle sound through Ubuntu's eSound (esd) system.  Plus there's
a bug either in Gnome that prevents the eSound driver to be
released so other application can use sound.

One application I had this issue with is the rather nice "Kino" video
editing program.

Workaround: Before running kino you have to select 'run' from the
Application menu and go "sudo killall esd" .   Then try again.  Of
course from then on you don't have sound in everything else. :)

So in short, perhaps not permissions are the problem, but that
/dev/dsp is IN USE by esd which doesn't release it.

Cheers,
Chanchao