Audio works in gnome, but not shell

Linux howto's, compile information, information on whatever we learned on working with linux, MACOs and - of course - Products of the big evil....
Post Reply
User avatar
^rooker
Site Admin
Posts: 1483
Joined: Fri Aug 29, 2003 8:39 pm

Audio works in gnome, but not shell

Post by ^rooker »

[PROBLEM]
When trying to run any application that tries to directly output sound, I got this errormessage:
Linux: can't open /dev/dsp
although sound was working properly for all graphical applications (I'm running Ubuntu 6.06 / gnome)

echo "xxx" > /dev/dsp returned this error:
bash: /dev/dsp: Device or resource busy
although I had the correct access rights set (e.g.: my user was in group audio).

[SOLUTION]
While this command:
echo "hello world" | festival --tts --pipe
didn't work and resulted in the above errors, using "esddsp" did the job:
echo "hello world" | esddsp festival --tts --pipe
The problem was that the "esd" (EsounD - The Enlightened Sound Daemon) was blocking direct access to the soundcard, so programs must either go through alsa or esd (if I understood correctly).

- esddsp is doing exactly this rerouting. voila!
Jumping out of an airplane is not a basic instinct. Neither is breathing underwater. But put the two together and you're traveling through space!
Post Reply