Weird problems on FC5; sound and bluetooth

[Tim]

On Wed, 2006-11-01 at 12:23 -0500, James Pifer wrote:
> About a week ago I started having some sound problems on my laptop. They
> started with VMware complaining that it couldn't open device /dev/dsp.
> Now other applications are also complaining or failing. For example, if
> I log off and log back on, gaim will have sound for a little while. Then
> it seems like something grabs the sound and won't release it. 
> 
> The only thing I can remember changing a little while ago was installing
> flash in firefox... Don't see any problems in /var/log/messages either. 

I've seen something similar.  In my case, it turned out to be because I
had a webpage open which had Flash on it, and Flash was using the sound
system, hogging it all to itself.  Closing off that webpage (or the web
browser, I can't remember), got things back up and running again.

 From time to time, I'll lose sound with Gaim, often because something
else was using the sound system at the time Gaim wanted it, and even
when that something else let go of it, Gaim wouldn't be able to make use
of it.  I'd have to shut Gaim down and re-start it.

At times, applications that wanted to make a sound would not only not be
able to (because the sound system was otherwise occupied), but would
also hang or get stuck.  It seems some software authors don't comprehend
"multitasking".

-- 
(Currently testing FC5, but still running FC4, if that's important.)

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