[gobolinux-users] /dev/dsp disappeared after upgrade

[Michael Homer]

On 6/21/07, Hi There <goboster at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Got sound working even a little better now. In case
> anyone was having similar
> problems, I added a module -- something like OSS Mixer
> -- to the kernel, then I
> was getting an error stating /dev/dsp was already in
> use at startup. Some old
> Ubuntu forums state this is due to artsd hogging
> /dev/dsp at startup. So I
> killed artsd, got sound back in all my apps but KDE.
> Disabled "enable sound
> system" in the control panel, no errors at startup
> (and no sound from KDE).
KDE routes all its sound through artsd; if you're using OSS, you have
to choose whether you want sound there or in exactly one other place
at a time. You can try running everything via artsdsp, but some
programs don't play well with it (artsdsp -m will help for some of
those).

You really would be better off trying to get ALSA going properly. If
you have an Ubuntu or Knoppix CD around, use it and see which modules
they load for sound. You may want to save the output of lsmod to disk
and go through one by one to see which section of the kernel config
they're in if you don't recognise which it is. Or enable the lot and
modprobe them one at a time until it works. To be clear though, the
absence of /dev/dsp after that is expected behaviour unless you've
enabled legacy emulation, and programs should be using the ALSA
interface instead.

I wouldn't recommend using OSS to anybody (it's deprecated for a
reason). Any program that really needs /dev/dsp is something you
should look at replacing, since it clearly hasn't been updated in a
while.
-Michael