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 -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 252 bytes Desc: OpenPGP digital signature URL: <http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos/attachments/20080105/1aee9d90/attachment-0005.sig>