alexander wrote: | What output do you get when doing: lsof | grep snd alexander, Below is the data that you requested. My current thinking, following Raine's lead, is that it is not qjackctl that is not exiting gracefully but pulseaudio, which leaves too much memory tied up in /dev/shm for qjackctl to come up twice in a row on my machine (1GB of RAM). Once I run "sudo rm /dev/shm/pulse*" qjackctl cycles at least 3 times (all I've tried). The problem may still lie with qjackctl, since I am using the "artsshell -q terminate" in qjackctl>Setup> Options>Execute script on Startup. While that seems to stop pulseaudio, it does not release the memory that pulseaudio tied up in /dev/shm. If someone has superior insight, please let me know. John