[kde-linux] How to reconnect KDE to sound when it is crashed

[James Richard Tyrer]

Philipp Neudecker wrote:
> Hi everyone,
> 
> Since I upgraded from RedHat 9 to FC4 I have a strange problem: After
> a while my sound driver appears to crash. I am not sure why, it
> happens especially with RealPlayer or Mplayer-plug-in in the
> SeaMonkey 1.0.3 browser. Unfortunately, I have not been able to
> recover the ability of KDE to use the sound module w/o logout.
> 
> Curiously, the "Soundcard Detection" works fine: "The following audio
> device was detected: Vedor: Ensoniq Model: 5880 Audio PC Module:
> snd-ens1371" I can hear the test sound, and the dection starts the 
> processes: artsshell status /usr/bin/esd -terminate -nobeeps -as 2
> -spawnfd 47
> 
> Also, KsCD plays CDs fine.

This doesn't use software to process the sound.

> However, when I try to enable and test the sound in the KDE Control
> Center sound dialogue, the Control Center crashes, as does SeaMonkey
> whenever I hit a website with ads on it. I cannot hear the sound
> played for the Shell system bell. Often the KDE logout also hangs.
> 
> Any idea what the problem is? Any device still busy? How can I find
> out and where can I look for error messages?
> 
> Most importantly: Can anyone tell me which processes to kill and
> restart and in which order to get things back up manually? I cannot
> always log out...

I suggest that you try killing: "artsd" and see if that fixes the problem.

Also, you might want to go to:

	Sound & Multimedia -> Sound System

in the Control Center and at the bottom of the "General" tab check the
box: "Auto-suspend if idle after" and set "1 seconds" in the window.  DO
NOT set to "0 seconds" there is a bug and this doesn't work.

-- 
JRT