Version: 4.6 (using KDE 4.6.0) OS: Linux knotify4 locks the audio device, preventing all other applications from using it. The computer can't produce any sound until knotify4 is killed. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: I'm not sure exactly what triggers this, though it happens consistently after using KDE for a few minutes. Perhaps the locking occurs the first time an audio system notification is played. Actual Results: [psy@ferret:/dev/snd]$ fuser -v /dev/snd/* USER PID ACCESS COMMAND /dev/snd/controlC0: psy 28788 F.... kded4 psy 28952 F.... pulseaudio /dev/snd/pcmC0D0p: psy 28803 F...m knotify4 /dev/snd/timer: psy 28803 f.... knotify4 Expected Results: knotify4 should not lock the audio device. This problem has also been reported with KDE 4.6 by Arch and Gentoo users: http://forum.kde.org/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=95872 http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-884684-start-0.html https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=122138
Does the lock go automatically away when not using sound notifications for more than one minute?
No, the lock does not automatically go away. It stays indefinitely, as far as I can tell.
Merci, then maybe Phonon developers know why the devices are kept open.
If Phonon is configured to use the hardware device (rather than the software mixing device) the result will be exclusive access to the first app that gets to play something. In this case knotify4. To resolve this issue you could either try different device priority ordering (though software mixing should stick out from the list of possible devices, so that should be an easy fix really), or you can install pulseaudio. Anyhow, this is more of a topic for a support forum or mailing list, thanks nevertheless.
Harald, pulseaudio is already installed and running. And it is not the case that only the first application gets exclusive access to device; I can have as many different applications as I want all playing sound simultaneously. The problem with the sound device being locked is unique to knotify4.
Then something must be broken elsewhere, certainly not Phonon. Knotify like most other kde apps uses Phonon, so if other stuff works, there is absolutely no reason why knotify would hog the device.
Yes, I agree something is broken somewhere—but where? I don't see how this can be a user configuration issue as this problem was occurring on a virgin install of openSUSE 11.4 (plus system updates); I haven't changed any audio settings. Since the problem occurs only with knotify4, perhaps this bug's product can be changed back to that. I'm happy to provide whatever further diagnostics are necessary to discover the cause.
Reassigning back to kdelibs, see the comments by the Phonon developer.
I have the same issue with kde 4.7.1. I can play stereo output just fine, but when I try to play 5.1 sound, all programs I tested return with "device busy". After killing knotify4 everything works.
I think I'm seeing this same issue on 4.7.3 knotify4 shows up with fuser or lsof against the pcm device and never terminates itself. In my case it is affecting applications trying to use OSS (like java sound), as the /dev/dsp device is locked.
In my case it means that I cannot start Jack, and I have read about others having the same problem. The workaround(finding out what is blocking and killing it) is far too complicated for the common user. This basically means that there is no workaround, which should give this bug some priority.
Could you please test with KDE 4.8 or 4.8.1 which is to be released next week?
I can't upgrade at the moment, but maybe one of the other commentors experiencing this problem can test with KDE 4.8.
On Arch, we got a bug report from an user using KDE 4.8. https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/28319 On Tuesday we'll update our packages to 4.8.1.
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No longer reproducible for me with Plasma 5.12.6. (But then again, maybe that's because Plasma doesn't use knotify any more?)
Ok, I'll close this out then. Thank you for the update!