Sound system error

[PaulFXH]

I'm using Sidux 2007-3 and, in general, the sound system works fine.
However, now and again (maybe 1 in 5 times) on bootup I get this message:
Sound server informational message:
Error while initializing the sound driver:
device: default can't be opened for playback (No such file or directory)
The sound server will continue, using the null output device.
When this happens, Amarok still plays audio files but .avi files play in VLC with perfect video but without sound.
Equally, Youtube videos play in VLC are soundless.
On the next bootup, without having changed any configuration, sound is fine again.
I have seen many references to this occurrence in various distros but have never come across a fix.
Anybody know what's going on here?

[knute]

So what happens when you restart the sound server itself?

[PaulFXH]

So what happens when you restart the sound server itself?
Hmmm, not sure I follow. WHAT sound server and HOW do I restart it?
Thanks
Paul

[PaulFXH]

Were you talking about disabling, and then re-enabling, the sound system, after the sound system error message showed up on boot?
If so, I've just done this -- actually 12 times straight -- and no dice. On re-enabling, I get exactly the same error message.
On reboot, however, everything goes back to normal.
I know from googling around that this is not an unocmmon problem. But has nobody figured out how to prevent it?

[knute]

Since you haven't said which sound server you are using, and are talking about amarok, i'm guessing that you are useing arts as your sound server. Restarting it, means that you tell the service to restart. In general, that's somewhere in /etc. In Sidux, I don't know.
In Gentoo, it's /etc/init.d/<name of script> restart
The form should be about the same, but the location may be different.
IF it's debian based it would be in /etc/rc?.d/whatever. The question mark is runlevels.
Not sure about redhat/fedora based. Don't remember, been too long.

And NO, not disabling, and re-enabling, I was talking about restarting.
It's a feature of the services (of which your sound is one).

Other possibilites for sound server could be besides arts, there are esd, alsa, pulseaudio, jack... There are others.

HTH