[KLUG Members] artsd

[Adam Tauno Williams]

>I'm running RH 7.2, KDE, on a Compaq 933 with 512 MB RAM. The 
>utilization of artds sound driver is consistently in the 90% range. 
>Every now and then I hear a burp from the speakers as it trys to play a
>sound, such as when logging into KDE. The commandline as shown in KPM
>is:
>/usr/bin/artsd -F 10 -S 4096 -a oss -d -s 60 -m artsmessage -l 3 -f
>I have noticed that if I have another process going, such as composing
>this email, the usage is split evenly between the two. That is, say 48%
>and 48%. It is a running process, as the STAT is R, for what that's
>worth.
>Any ideas or pointers in the right direction are appreciated.

I'd guess it is in some polling loop,  or some thread has hit a race condition. 
Can you "strace -p {pid}" and see if it is making any system calls.

If you whack artsd can you play a sound file directly through the sound device
(/dev/audio?) without difficulty.

I'm not familiar with KDE,  but I assume artsd does the same thing as GNOME's
esd (mixing multiple streams to the sound device,  avoiding stupid permissions
problems on the sound device, etc...)

>Also, I finally made the final move on my work desktop to run 
>exclusively Linux. I have a Windows PC nearby for critical Novell 
>administration, but I am working on eliminating that too. Most of what I
>do I can do on Linux. To those who say it's not ready for the desktop, I
>say phooey! :)

You'll never hear me sat that!

Systems and Network Administrator
Morrison Industries
1825 Monroe Ave NW
Grand Rapids, MI. 49505