Bug 117686

After startup, the soundsystem is activated in the KDE-Controlcenter, "ps
aux|grep arts" does not return anything. When I click on "Test Sound" in the
Controlcenter, it says something like "starting soundserver", but I can hear no
sound. After that, artsd is running (/opt/kde3/bin/artsd -F 10 -S 4096 -s 60 -m
artsmessage -c drkonqi -l 3 -f).

The command "lsmod|grep snd" gives:
snd_pcm_oss            59040  0
snd_mixer_oss          18944  1 snd_pcm_oss
snd_bt87x              14152  1
snd_pcm                93064  2 snd_pcm_oss,snd_bt87x
snd_timer              24452  1 snd_pcm
snd                    60420  7
snd_pcm_oss,snd_mixer_oss,snd_bt87x,snd_pcm,snd_timer
soundcore               9184  2 btaudio,snd
snd_page_alloc         10632  2 snd_bt87x,snd_pcm

After "rcalsasound restart", "lsmod|grep snd" gives the result as in the first
post. "Test Sound" does not work yet.

When I deactivate the Soundsystem in Controlcenter and activate it again, the
message "restarting soundserver" takes forever; it goes to 100% and starts over
at 5% again and again. When I click cancel and "Test Sound" again, everything works.

You likely updated from 9.2 or older version?
This problem is solved by simply running yast2 to reconfigure the sound device.
The alsasound init script was changed only to accept the hwcfg-* stuff.  See
README.SuSE in alsa package for details.

I upgraded from Suse 9.3, which I upgraded from 9.2 (and before that even older
versions, I think).

I tried to reconfigure sound by yast2, using Hardware->Sound, but I am not sure
what I tried exactly. I think I removed the sound device, then it was still
shown as unconfigured, and then I configured it again (where an error occured;
but I have to check that again).

I will report more details soon.

Maybe it's a bug of yast2-sound module.  You should have quit yast2 once after
you removed the sound device, and restart yast2 again.

After doing this, alsasound seems to start up correctly.

However, even though the KDE sound system is enabled, no artsd is running after
logging in. When I click on "Test sound" in the KDE Controlcenter, it starts the
soundserver before playing the sound sucessfully.

But I will check again soon if the problem really occurs after each startup.

Yes, it seems to happen at every startup that the KDE soundsystem does not start
(no artsd process running after login).

Then you didn't set up the sound device correctly yet.  Remember that the sound
driver is _not_ loaded by alsasound init script but by udev/hotplug at the boot
time.  alsasound init script exists only for some extra jobs.

Try to login on runlevel 3, and check /proc/asound/cards whether the sound
driver is really loaded.

Not on runlevel 3 (which I will check later), but on runlevel 5 after logging in
to KDE, I get:

cat /proc/asound/cards
0 [AudioPCI       ]: ENS1371 - Ensoniq AudioPCI
                     Ensoniq AudioPCI ENS1371 at 0xd800, irq 10
1 [Bt878          ]: Bt87x - Brooktree Bt878
                     Brooktree Bt878 at 0xdddfe000, irq 10

Then my guess is correct.  The sound devices must appear on runlevel 3, too.
On runlevel 5, accessing an OSS device or something triggers the auto-loading
mechanism.

Try to reconfigure the sound device via yast again.
After set up, you must have /etc/sysconfig/hardware/hwcfg-* files including your
sound driver module.

I updated to 10.1 Alpha2 in the meantime.

On runlevel 3, cat /proc/asound/cards gives:
0 [AudioPCI       ]: ENS1371 - Ensoniq AudioPCI
                     Ensoniq AudioPCI ENS1371 at 0xd800, irq 10
1 [Bt878          ]: Bt87x - Brooktree Bt878
                     Brooktree Bt878 at 0xdddfe000, irq 10

After KDE-login, still no artsd is running.

Does this bug still appear in the later versions?

No reaction since more than 2 months, therefore closing as CANTFIX (aka WONTFIX).

If you can provide the needed information, feel free to reopen the bug.