[CM] snd - channel number during installation

[Thomas F. Bechteler]

  Hello!

I finally installed snd-7.0 and it shows me 2 input
and 2 ouput channels. It may depend on the
snd-version how many channels are being displayed.

I tested the recording feature and it was working.
Also playback works fine ... up to one point,
but that is no snd-specific problem. This problem occurs
also with e.g. "audacity". But snd, since it is a more
professional program, gave me some information
why it crashes. I posted the following message to
"alt.os.linux.suse" since it seems a SuSE-specific problem.
For the interested reader I copied my message at the end of this
message.


Cordially

Thomas

=============================================
   Dear Reader!

Recently I posted here a message about my problem
with sound. I am using SuSE 9.0 pro.
Now I came closer to specify my problem, and
it seems not a KDE specific problem, as I assumed
in my previous posted message.

Problem: When I am using recording software
("audacity" or "snd") the sound is being recorded.
However, when playing back and the playback
is finished (either by pressing stop or the sound file
is simply finished) the programs are crashing (they close).
After this, there is no sound at all! And I could not
get it back, even by playing around with YaST.
Opening the recording software and trying to play back
results then in an immediate crash. The program
"snd" gave me fortunately at least this message:

open read /dev/dsp0: Device or resource busy
 [audio.c[1956] linux_audio_open_with_error]

With my limited knowledge in Linux I could only get around
by rebooting the computer. During the shutdown the screen
showed me the following information (I give just an excerpt):

snd-mixer busy
...
snd-*     busy                      failed

After rebooting the sound was there. (Just a remark:
after crashing the audio it is not possible to restart
the X-server by "ctrl-alt-backspace". The computer hangs,
no GUI, and also to switch to any console is of no use.
I only could brutally switch off the computer.)

What is the reason that the device is busy?
And how can I solve this problem?


Thanks for any hints and comments


Cordially

Thomas