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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