Bug 411071

wierd, are you using pulseaudio?  (ie, is kde-settings-pulseaudio installed?)

[root@cynosure ~]# rpm -q kde-settings-pulseaudio
kde-settings-pulseaudio-3.5-35.fc8
[root@cynosure ~]# ps -fe | grep -Fi pulse
orion     2647     1  0 14:15 ?        00:00:00 /usr/bin/pulseaudio -D

Is the error repeatable, when you restart your session?

(In reply to comment #3)
> Is the error repeatable, when you restart your session?

Yup.  And if I run arts by hand:

$ /usr/bin/artsd -F 10 -S 4096 -a alsa -d -s 60 -m artsmessage -c drkonqi -l 3 -f
*** PULSEAUDIO: Unable to create stream.
artsd: pcm_pulse.c:115: pulse_stop: Assertion `pcm->stream' failed.

Hmm, maybe this is an X/pulseaudio issue:

[root@cynosure ~]# ls -l /dev/dsp
crw-rw---- 1 root root 14, 3 2007-12-04 14:14 /dev/dsp

Dec  4 14:15:41 cynosure pulseaudio[2647]: module-alsa-sink.c: Error opening PCM
device hw:0: No such device
Dec  4 14:15:41 cynosure pulseaudio[2647]: module.c: Failed to load  module
"module-alsa-sink" (argument: "device=hw:0
sink_name=alsa_output.pci_8086_2485_alsa_playback_0"): initialization failed.
Dec  4 14:15:41 cynosure pulseaudio[2647]: module-alsa-source.c: Error opening
PCM device hw:0: No such device
Dec  4 14:15:41 cynosure pulseaudio[2647]: module.c: Failed to load  module
"module-alsa-source" (argument: "device=hw:0
source_name=alsa_input.pci_8086_2485_alsa_capture_0"): initialization failed.
Dec  4 14:16:02 cynosure pulseaudio[2647]: module-x11-xsmp.c: X11 session
manager not running.
Dec  4 14:16:02 cynosure pulseaudio[2647]: module.c: Failed to load  module
"module-x11-xsmp" (argument: ""): initialization failed.

I also got some X updates in the same batch:

Dec 04 10:51:27 Updated: xorg-x11-server-Xorg - 1.3.0.0-36.fc8.i386
Dec 04 10:51:57 Updated: xorg-x11-drv-ati - 6.7.196-2.fc8.i386
Dec 04 10:52:07 Updated: xorg-x11-server-utils - 7.3-2.fc8.i386

Still the kde issue with spawning infinite artsd processes though (probably not
anything new there though).

Yes, it's definitely audio driver/pulseaudio misbahaving here.

IN the meantime, you could try disabling it,
rpm -e kde-settings-pulseaudio alsa-plugins-pulseaudio

which should solve the immediate problem of arts crashing.

I don't think it is because since this update (or perhaps another recent package)
I am getting ownership problem with all the sound /dev entries. The entries
/dev/dsp, /dev/mixer, /dev/audio, and pcm's in /dev/snd are all owned by root
and therefor not accessible thus crashing arts (this is without pulseaudio).
Any ideas what is causing this?
Thanks

What version of kernel are you using?

I'm using 2.6.23.8-63.fc8.  Does /dev/dsp need to be readable by the user? 
/usr/bin/pulseaudio is setuid root and chmod 666 /dev/dsp* didn't change anything.  

pulseaudio --log-level=debug output:

I: main.c: Page size is 4096 bytes
I: main.c: Fresh high-resolution timers available! Bon appetit!
D: cli-command.c: Checking for existance of
'/usr/lib/pulse-0.9/modules//module-hal-detect.so': success
I: module-hal-detect.c: Trying capability alsa
D: module-hal-detect.c: Not loaded device
/org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/computer_alsa_timer
D: module-hal-detect.c: Not loaded device
/org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/computer_alsa_sequencer
D: module-hal-detect.c: Not loaded device
/org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/pci_8086_2486_alsa_playback_0
D: module-hal-detect.c: Not loaded device
/org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/pci_8086_2486_alsa_capture_0
D: module-hal-detect.c: Not loaded device
/org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/pci_8086_2485_alsa_capture_1
D: module-hal-detect.c: Loading module-alsa-sink with arguments 'device=hw:0
sink_name=alsa_output.pci_8086_2485_alsa_playback_0'
ALSA lib pcm_hw.c:1207:(_snd_pcm_hw_open) Invalid value for card
E: module-alsa-sink.c: Error opening PCM device hw:0: No such device
E: module.c: Failed to load  module "module-alsa-sink" (argument: "device=hw:0
sink_name=alsa_output.pci_8086_2485_alsa_playback_0"): initialization failed.
D: module-hal-detect.c: Not loaded device
/org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/pci_8086_2485_alsa_playback_0
D: module-hal-detect.c: Loading module-alsa-source with arguments 'device=hw:0
source_name=alsa_input.pci_8086_2485_alsa_capture_0'
ALSA lib pcm_hw.c:1207:(_snd_pcm_hw_open) Invalid value for card
E: module-alsa-source.c: Error opening PCM device hw:0: No such device
E: module.c: Failed to load  module "module-alsa-source" (argument: "device=hw:0
source_name=alsa_input.pci_8086_2485_alsa_capture_0"): initialization failed.
D: module-hal-detect.c: Not loaded device
/org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/pci_8086_2485_alsa_capture_0
D: module-hal-detect.c: Not loaded device
/org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/pci_8086_2486_alsa_control__1
D: module-hal-detect.c: Not loaded device
/org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/pci_8086_2485_alsa_control__1

Well, running pulseaudio as root seems to startup fine, so I guess it is
permissions.

Yes, it is not the ownership. I just did chmod 0666 for the above devices and
it is working fine.

I think this is the cause of the permission/ownership issue:

Dec  4 13:29:11 cynosure kernel: hal-acl-tool[2328]: segfault at 74746166 eip
0056cc90 esp bfb60784 error 4
Dec  4 13:29:11 cynosure kernel: hal-acl-tool[2330]: segfault at 74746166 eip
0056cc90 esp bffd4e34 error 4
Dec  4 13:29:14 cynosure pulseaudio[2448]: module-alsa-sink.c: Error opening PCM
device hw:0: No such device

I am not sure about these since I get them on my ThinkPad T42 but not on
my DELL Precison 390 with the same kernel etc. I will report this to kernel
separately.

However, the last few kernal updates contained ALSA updates:

* Fri Nov 30 2007 Chuck Ebbert <cebbert>
- ALSA: fix missing controls on some drivers (#370821)
- ACPI: send initial button state on startup (#275651)

since udev and alsa packages have not changed kernel could be the culprit.

I checked an F7 system and all these devices had user:root ownership
but 0600 permission. After starting KDE these devices where transferred
to the owner. This is no longer happening. Any ideas?

After doing a bunch of tests, I'm fairly certain this has nothing to do with the
kdebase update.  I reverted to stock f8's kdebase, and the problem remained.  I
log into gnome, no audio there either.  Running system-config-soundcard works. 
Logging in as root, audio works.  wtf?

I did that too, as well as downgrading some packages that were in the updates
recently to no avail. I am puzzled. The only way I could somewhat get around
it was to add MODE="0666" to the /etc/udev/rules.d/90-alsa.rules file.

By the way, one package that was updated that I did not downgrade yet was
the xorg-x11-server. Could this be doing something? Changelog does not seem
to indicate anything.

tested that and made no difference

There's a problem with hal-acl-tool sometimes crashing; haven't tracked it down
(it happens very rarely) yet. The quick fix is to 'rm -f /var/lib/hal/acl-list',
'service restart haldaemon'.. and pray :-). 

I plan on fixing this next week and will issue a F8 update. Sorry for this.

Okay, so bug #380031 is the cause of the permission/ownership issue.  The kde
issue is the infinite number of artsd crash dumps.  How can that be handled?

Re: comment #17
Thanks David!  That did the trick (for me).  yay, no more hair pulling.

Re: comment #18
when pulseaudio doesn't accept arts input (for whatever reason), arts crashes. 
Since arts is essentially unmaintained (upstream), I don't see this changing
(here in fedora anyway).

marking as dup of bug #380031

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 380031 ***

Fixed in pilot-link-0.12.2-10.