[nas] No love (could not create audio connection block infowhen starting)

[Nick Ing-Simmons]

Jon Trulson <jon at radscan.com> writes:
>> So basically, I've had sporadic at best results, following intuition and 
>> advice.
>>
>> Every now and again I can get nasd to start, but it either doesn't play 
>> sound,
>> or complaints that /dev/dsp is busy.
>
> 	Only one app can be accessing the audio device at a time.  

This seems not to be true with ALSA and OSS emulation.
OSS opens a "plug" device and that gets mixed with other sources.
(At least on my hardware.)

That said on SuSE8.3/SuSE9.0 the ALSA OSS emulation seemed fragile,
but seems ok on SuSE9.1 (2.6 kernal and ALSA 1.x) 


>nasd, 
>when running, and in it's default configuration, will always release the 
>device when a flow is completed.  This way it does not hog 
>the device.
>
> 	Unfortunately esound, arts, etc do not.  They expect to own the 
>device the entire time they are running.
>
> 	You might try something like 'fuser -v /dev/dsp' next time that 
>happens to see what process is holding the device open...
>
>> I use Redhats cheesy little "detect 
>> sound
>> device" applet, and it always detects the device, and is able to play the 
>> sound,
>> even when NASD thinks it's busy.
>
> 	Is the rh applet merely sending it's audio to 
>esound/artsd/whatever rather than to the device directly?  If so, and one 
>of those is the culprit holding the device open, then yes, that would work 
>would it not? :)
>
> 	try running strace on nasd when this happens.. something like:
>
> 	strace -o/tmp/out nasd -aa -v -d 99
>
> 	Then see if anything interesting is in /tmp/out.
>
>>
>> The only thing consistent is when I run arts :x -aa,
>                                           ^^^^
>
> 	nasd you mean?
>
>> /tmp/.sockets/audiox will be created, meaning I can't use that port anymore.
>
> 	Why?  as long as another process (ie: another nasd) isn't bound to 
>that socket, the new nasd will just re-use it...  Otherwise, if it is 
>bound to someone else, you will get something like an 'address already in 
>use' error.
>
> 	BTW... What version of NAS are you running?
>[...]