[linux-audio-dev] Sick of rebooting

[Robert Jonsson]

Hi Hans,

Wednesday 01 October 2003 01.39 skrev Hans Fugal:
> I'm hoping there's a simple solution to this that I've just missed
> somewhere along the line. Occasionally something will crash while using
> oss emulation and I can't use the sound card until I reboot. I've tried
> lsof /dev/dsp and as many other variations as I can think of and I never
> get anything (even when sound is playing), which I think is related to
> using devfs. I've also tried fuser, and good old visual grep on the
> output of ps and nothing is running that would use the soundcard yet I
> can't unload the snd-pcm-oss module.
>
> This time it was timidity (which I have promptly uninstalled since this
> version seems capable of nothing other than locking up my soundcard),
> but it has been mplayer in the past.
>
> Is there some way to restore access to the sound card short of
> rebooting?

This is probably one of two things, none is easy to fix.

1. Driver problem. If the driver fails due to a bug, it generally leads to 
that the hardware is left in an undefined state. Meaning that there is 
absolutely nothing you can do but reboot.
Long term solution is to get a new driver or fix the old one, since you 
mention OSS I would propose trying the ALSA drivers. If you need OSS support 
there is a compatibility layer.

2. Actual hardware problem. Might be the motherboard but in general it's the 
soundcard. It might help to switch pci-slot. Otherwise the only solution is 
to get new hardware...

-
Unless you are experiencing other hardware related problems, lockups, reboots 
etc I think driver problems would be the more probable.

/Robert