I'm running F8 with KDE. I upgraded from F7. system-config-soundcard plays a sound. When the system starts, I see this in a popup: Informational- artsmessage Sound server informational message: Error while initializing the sound driver: device: default can't be opened for playback (Connection refused) The sound server will continue, using the null output device. I am able to hear audio in flash movies played inside firefox and i CAN play songs in Amarok. But if I try to view the same videos after downloading them, mplayer says *** PULSEAUDIO: Unable to connect: Connection refused [AO_ALSA] Playback open error: Connection refused Could not open/initialize audio device -> no sound. Audio: no sound Starting playback... I've been searching the net and find about 1000 posts on this same problem. It appears to be deep in the guts of Ubuntu and Fedora, users in both lists are posting suggestions like crazy. On the surface, the most logical approach is to look at this as a console permission problem. Permissions on /dev/dsp were 660, so maybe I need to follow the advice Ubuntu users follow of making it 666 (either manually or by adding 2 lines in /etc/security/console.perms.d/50-default.perms. Note the new sound lines at the end of each stanza: <pilot>=/dev/pilot <scanner>=/dev/scanner* /dev/usb/scanner* <rio500>=/dev/usb/rio500 <fb>=/dev/fb /dev/fb[0-9]* \ /dev/fb/* <kbd>=/dev/kbd <joystick>=/dev/js[0-9]* <gpm>=/dev/gpmctl <dri>=/dev/nvidia* /dev/3dfx* /dev/dri/card* <mainboard>=/dev/apm_bios <pmu>=/dev/pmu <bluetooth>=/dev/rfcomm* <irda>=/dev/ircomm* <dvb>=/dev/dvb/adapter*/* <sound>=/dev/dsp* /dev/snd/* # permission definitions <console> 0600 <pilot> 0660 root.uucp <console> 0660 <scanner> 0660 root.lp <console> 0600 <fb> 0600 root <console> 0600 <kbd> 0600 root <console> 0600 <joystick> 0600 root <console> 0700 <gpm> 0700 root <console> 0600 <mainboard> 0600 root <console> 0600 <rio500> 0600 root <console> 0600 <pmu> 0600 root <console> 0600 <bluetooth> 0600 root <console> 0600 <irda> 0600 root <console> 0600 <dvb> 0600 root <xconsole> 0600 /dev/console 0600 root.root <console> 0600 <dri> 0600 root <console> 0666 <sound> 0600 root Still after that, sound signals were refused. I don't have a sound group on my F8 system, perhaps I should change <sound> to <pulse> ???. Changes like that did help about 3 years ago in Fedora 5, as I recall, when I needed to allow users to play cdroms. But the pulse audio problem is deeper, it appears to me. Many people say "turn on services ConsoleKit and Avahi." I did have ConsoleKit on already. I had turned off avahi. Its help information says you should only turn it on if you are on a network using Zeroconf service discovery, and I'm not. If avahi is really required, that message about the module that appears in system-config-services urgently needs fixing. Some people say remove the rpm alsa-plugins-pulseaudio and another Fedora 8 person has urged me to install kde-settings-pulse One person told me that if I upgraded from FC7 to F8, then existing users inherit some kind of configuration mistake/error and they can't be put right unless you clear out some dot files, but nobody seems to be quite sure what file that might be. None of these are working for me yet, but I've followed down so many blind alleys there's no telling what unneeded changes I made or what mistakes I imposed. Usually, when there is some widespread problem like this, there are lots of little half-baked fixes floating about, and eventually somebody who really understands the root of the problem fixes an RPM in the distribution somewhere and the problem goes away. Problems like "no video after suspend" or "ide cdrom not found" seem to end up disappearing and it is not so easy to figure out why. Concerning the sound problem, does anybody know what the real root of the problem is? PJ ps: is this informative? $ rpm -qa | grep pulse pulseaudio-libs-glib2-0.9.8-5.fc8 pulseaudio-libs-zeroconf-0.9.8-5.fc8 pulseaudio-utils-0.9.8-5.fc8 pulseaudio-libs-0.9.8-5.fc8 alsa-plugins-pulseaudio-1.0.15-2.fc8 akode-pulseaudio-2.0.1-9.fc8 gstreamer-plugins-pulse-0.9.5-0.4.svn20070924.fc8 pulseaudio-core-libs-0.9.8-5.fc8 kde-settings-pulseaudio-3.5-36.fc8.1 pulseaudio-0.9.8-5.fc8 pulseaudio-module-x11-0.9.8-5.fc8 pulseaudio-libs-0.9.8-5.fc8 $ alsacard *** PULSEAUDIO: Unable to connect: Connection refused Open error: Connection refused 0 -- Paul E. Johnson Professor, Political Science 1541 Lilac Lane, Room 504 University of Kansas