Configuring sound in Gnome

["Tim Dean" <tdean gr com>]

I'm new to gnome, so excuse any silly questions here...

I have my sound card working on Linux - I can use the "play" command to play
any .wav file and it works fine. I have the "Enable sound server startup"
option checked in the Gnome config tool, but when I try to play a sound from
within the config tool, I get nothing.

After perusing the archives from this list, I was able to surmise that the
sound server I want to be running is called "esd". I looked at the processes
running on my machine, and sure enough "esd" is not running. I tried running
manually from the command line and I hear a series of tones, but still no
sounds from my desktop or the Gnome config tool.

I did try running "esdplay" on some .wav files, and they played OK (whether
or not I had ESD running). However, I got the following error message as my
sound plays:

    Audio File Library: error 5: Unix Read Failed

Not sure if this is the cause of my problem.

So, I have many questions:
- Is the above error causing my problem? What is causing it and what does it
mean?
- How do I make sure that esd gets run? Do I need to do some special
configuration?
- Is there any place where these tools/config are documented? I can find
nothing in the
  gnome user guide, and would be interested to know what other documentation
  sources are available.

===================
Tim Dean
Consultant
tdean@gr.com
Voicemail: (612) 595-9600 x304

Greenbrier & Russel
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