UNIX for Advanced & Expert Users

hi all

i have a problem that if i use something like firefox it will grab the sound device and not release it, so i can not use skype

is there a command to see what is using the audio device

i am using Fedora

thaks
Adam

You can install lsof which will list everything that has open files and sockets on your system. look for things that have /dev/sound/ or /dev/dsp or things like that.

One odd thing I've discovered with firefox and flash is that programs it launches also inherit an open sound device! if firefox is hogging the sound device, and firefox launches xpdf, and you close firefox completely, xpdf will still hog it! It is very bizarre.

If you can turn off OSS emulation completely and use alsa exclusively, hogging shouldn't be a problem. I don't know exactly how to do this in fedora though.

It's not too strange if you think about how open file handles interact with fork/exec... Basically when you fork a process, the new process normally inherits all the file descriptors of the first process - and the file descriptors stay open when you call exec(), too. There are ways around this (flagging a file descriptor "close on exec", or explicitly closing the file after a fork()) - I guess firefox just hasn't implemented them, or something...

Yep, I know how it works. I'm just stunned the sound device was left inheritable... Probably Flash's responsibility.