Description of problem:

I have half a dozen boxes running Linux, and I'm using esd for audio. Three of
them have, after running for a day or two, gotten into a state where esd is
hung. strace shows that it is in a blocking write to /dev/dsp. I am using the
OSS drivers. /dev/dsp is handled by the i810_audio module. Alt-SysRq-T shows
this stack trace:

kernel: SysRq : Show State
kernel:
kernel:                          free                        sibling
kernel:   task             PC    stack   pid father child younger older
kernel: esd           S E89FC000     0  6531   6529 (NOTLB)
kernel: Call Trace:   [<c011d5e5>] schedule [kernel] 0x125 (0xe89fdec0)
kernel: [<c012bb35>] schedule_timeout [kernel] 0x65 (0xe89fdee0)
kernel: [<c012bac0>] process_timeout [kernel] 0x0 (0xe89fdf00)
kernel: [<f89b39ff>] i810_write [i810_audio] 0x2df (0xe89fdf18)
kernel: [<c0153a53>] sys_write [kernel] 0xa3 (0xe89fdf94)

I tracked down the source location to the schedule_timeout in i810_audio.c at
line 1665 (it's the only call to schedule_timeout in i810_write()).

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
2.4.21-20.EL

How reproducible:
Occasional. (Once every 1-3 days for the boxes that seem to hit it.)

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Kill off esd
2. Run an app that auto-spawns esd
3. Restart it over and over

Note that the app need not actually play any sound. esd will write zeroes to
/dev/dsp, which is enough to see the hang.
  
Actual results:

Our app shuts down happily, but then at some point takes a long time to shut
down. It then hangs during startup. It is trying to communicate with the esd
daemon, which strace shows is trying to write to /dev/dsp.

Expected results:

An app that happily shuts down and starts up, and an esd that doesn't hang and
goes away when its last client closes.

Additional info:

Looking at that line of i810_write, it looks like it's waiting for a DMA
transfer to finish. I don't know how to see what DMA transfers are outstanding,
or logging when one is queued up to be sure there is something to wait for.
Actually, I don't know anything about DMA other than it standing for either of
Direct Memory Access or Dangblasted Maggot Ancestors.

I have posted this question to the linux-sound mailing list too.