[CentOS] Pidgin and (lack of) sound on CentOS 4.6

[Johnny Hughes]

Bart Schaefer wrote:
> When I start pidgin from the Applications -> Internet -> Internet
> Messenger menu, my sound device stops working.
> 
> I think this has something to do with the Gnome applet.  I appear to
> end up with two (sometimes more) copies of the "gaim" process running
> -- such that if I use the right-button menu on the Gnome applet to
> quit pidgin, a login dialog is stil left behind and sometimes won't
> exit.  I'm guessing these multiple gaim processes somehow deadlock the
> sound device, such that even after I kill them, no other process can
> play audio.  Pidgin/gaim itself can't play sounds in this condition,
> either.
> 
> I've tried using "lsof" to find all processes that have the sound
> device open and force them to exit or restart, but that doesn't help.
> Once the sound goes out, only a reboot brings it back.  The flash and
> mplayer plugins for firefox/seamonkey are still able to play (silent)
> video in this condition, but starting up e.g. gmplayer blocks forever
> trying to open the sound device.
> 
> Googling turned up this:
> http://blog.turbulentsky.com/2007/12/pidgin-has-no-sound-in-ubuntu-gutsy.html
> but I have no reason to be confident that would apply to CentOS.
> Searching on gaim instead of pidgin finds stuff that's four years old
> and almost certainly not relevant.
> 
> Unfortunately I don't have much experience with audio apps on linux
> (or anywhere else, for that matter).  I've never had any luck creating
> a .asoundrc or trying to get all my applications to agree on whether
> to use ALSA instead of OSS (although I take it OSS is pretty much
> obsolete now, I don't even know if the kernel in RHEL4 is recent
> enough to use ALSA by default).  So if anyone has any clues to share
> on how to go about diagnosing this, I'd appreciate the help.
> 
> Here are the sound-related modules from "lsmod":
> 
> snd_intel8x0           36237  2
> snd_ac97_codec         65425  1 snd_intel8x0
> snd_pcm_oss            52729  0
> snd_mixer_oss          21953  2 snd_pcm_oss
> snd_pcm                92485  2 snd_intel8x0,snd_pcm_oss
> snd_timer              28229  1 snd_pcm
> snd_page_alloc         14541  2 snd_intel8x0,snd_pcm
> gameport                8641  1 snd_intel8x0
> snd_mpu401_uart        11457  1 snd_intel8x0
> snd_rawmidi            28005  1 snd_mpu401_uart
> snd_seq_device         12105  1 snd_rawmidi
> snd                    57765  11
> snd_intel8x0,snd_ac97_codec,snd_pcm_oss,snd_mixer_oss,snd_pcm,snd_timer,snd_mpu401_uart,snd_rawmidi,snd_seq_device
> soundcore              13089  2 snd
> 
> Tell me what shovel to use, and I'll dig up any other system
> information that may be needed.  Thanks in advance.

While I do not have this problem, and I do not normally recommend this,
there are EL5 RPMS for pidgin at their site:

http://www.pidgin.im/download/centos_rhel/

You can try their files to see if it helps.

Thanks,
Johnny Hughes

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