sound device in use by other user (who's logged out...)

[vandorp]

Hi,

My machine is by 2 people (me and someone els) who log in and out very often, sometimes 10 times a day. (machine is logged out, 2 people watch TV, one decides he has to download an mp3 or check the internet movie database or watch a trailer or check train arrivel times or book a trip etc. 30 minutes later the other does roughly the same ). We both use Gnome 2.8.

Actually, this doesn't work very well. Very often a user can't get sound from gxine. Checking the alsa settings (gnome alsa mixer 0.9.6) sometimes shows everyting "on", sometimes it shows nothing, just a grey window). I suspect the sound device is in use by someone else. Rebooting helps. Loggin out, deleting the ~/gnome2/.session file from "the other" user, loggin in as that user, logging out, logging back in as the user who had the problem (when things seem really messed up, I delete his ~/gnome2/.session as well) always solves the problem.

I will investigate the probleem deeper, but I must warn you: I'm not a programmer. Before I re-invent the wheel (besides from the wheel being patended these days, this doesn't advance science very much), are there others having similar problems? Are there more people with such a usage pattern, and are they having problems?

Oh by the way, I sometimes have problems that gnome doesn't log out, and/or logs in veeerrrryyyy slowly. Deleting the ~/gnome2/session file seems to "solve" this as well. But it happens quite often to me. Seems Evolution related somehow.

I just wish they took some time to make Gnome more stable, in stead of adding bells and whistles like the sound-preview in an mp3 directory.

Sorry for the rant