[Techtalk] mpg123 error

[Telsa Gwynne]

On Sat, Dec 01, 2001 at 02:26:27PM -0500 or thereabouts, Raven Brooke wrote:
> 
> I am getting the following error when trying to play mp3's with mpg123:
> Error opening libao oss driver
> any idea where to start debugging this?

I just had to delete a pile of suggestions to do with 
"mpg123 -o devicetype" (which sets the devicetype it should use) 
when I realised I hadn't looked carefully enough at the error
message. "Error opening"? 

Is the libao package correctly installed? I don't know the
dpkg incantation, but rpm -V libao will verify that the 
package is there and "as expected".

I wondered about permissions, but I think if you don't have 
permission the error would be "Can't open" rather than "Error 
opening", so that may be a red herring. 

Are you running KDE or GNOME, perhaps? My only other
guess is that perhaps only one thing is allowed to open
the sound stuff, and that esd or artz is running already.
In which case, perhaps you do need to tell it to use that?
I think mpg123 -o esd would do it for GNOME. I never had
to do that; it Just Worked. But perhaps you may need to?
(This sounds unlikely to me because I'm sure I'm missing
something, but I may as well throw it in for someone to 
correct and then I will know too :))

Only other thing I can think of to suggest is that there is
a GPL'd equivalent for mpg123 called mpg321 around now. You
might grab it and see whether that works differently? 

Telsa