Sound card getting blocked somehow

[Jesse Sheidlower]

My soundcard seems to be blocked somehow, and I'm not sure how
this happened or what to do about it. I don't believe I did
anything specific, but sound simply stopped working; if I
start up xmms (for example) I get a console message "**
WARNING **: oss_open(): Failed to open audio device
(/dev/dsp): No such file or directory", and a popup window
reading "Couldn't open audio: Please check that: Your
soundcard is configured properly/You have the correct output
plugin selected/No other program is blocking the soundcard."

I know that the card is configured and the right output plugin
is selected (I don't get sound with any other apps either),
and I don't have anything else running that uses sound, and in
any case lsof shows that nothing is using /dev/dsp.

Rebooting fixes it, but it then happens again, with no obvious
trigger.

In my most recent attempt to fix things I managed to delete
/dev/dsp entirely (I get the "oss_open" message regardless),
and don't know how to recreate it.

I'm running 6.0-STABLE #3; here's my /dev/sndstat:

-----
$ cat /dev/sndstat
FreeBSD Audio Driver (newpcm)
Installed devices:
pcm0: <Intel ICH3 (82801CA)> at io 0x1c00, 0x18c0 irq 11 bufsz 16384 kld snd_ich (1p/1r/4v channels duplex default)
-----

Thanks.

Jesse Sheidlower