audio problem - /dev/dsp: op. not supported by device

[Nick Holley]

Nathan Kinkade wrote:

>I recently upgraded my system from 4.8-STABLE to 5.1-RELEASE.  I haven't
>had any problems except with XMMS.  Randomly XMMS will fail after it
>finishes playing a song and before it has started the next - the error
>dialog says "Couldn't open audio" in the title bar.  The message that
>shows up on the console is:
>
>** WARNING **: oss_open(): Failed to open audio device (/dev/dsp):
>Operation not supported by device
>
>If I repeatedly hit the play button it will eventually play the next
>song.  Sometimes it will play 4 or 5 songs consecutively without a
>problem, and other times the problem arises after each song.  I have
>tried deinstalling XMMS and then recompiling, but still nothing.  I have
>also tried `fstat | grep dsp', but nothing appears to be using the
>/dev/dsp.  Does anyone have any ideas what might be wrong?
>
>Thanks,
>Nathan
>  
>
As bad as I feel for you, I am so glad someone else is having this 
problems with 5.1. Every time I see a sound error (quite often), I want 
to stomp the shit out of my computer.

Ok, frustration aside, I am getting the exact same error as you with 
xmms at the same times (after the completion of a song). I don't know 
what hardware you are running, but I have an Asus A7N8X with onboard 
sound using the pcm sound driver. The sound problems also crop up with 
mplayer, sometimes at the beginning of a movie, but also when I pause 
and unpause. Snes9x has issues as well with the sound stopping and being 
unable to restart as such:

GSnes9x-WARNING **: A error has ocurred when tried to resume Esound.

Note that the gui is just redisplaying the error the snes9x core gives.

I'm sure this is a bug in 5.1, but I haven't collected enough 
information to approach a developer even if I knew who to approach. 
Actually, I don't really have a method for collecting information 
either; I was just hoping to send someone all the error messages I 
receive and then do what they need to solve the problem.

This is a serious issue for me so if you need, I will be more than 
willing to help out in any way I can.

Nick