Finding and Killing Processes Blocking Alsa Devices

By Michael Altfield, on September 5th, 2009

Quite often, and for whatever reason, I go to play a sound in linux and I get a “device or resource busy” error. Restarting alsasound doesn’t work. Here’s what does:

guttersnipe@guttersnipe ~ $ fuser -v /dev/snd/*
                     USER        PID ACCESS COMMAND
/dev/snd/controlC0:  guttersnipe  21993 F.... python2.5
/dev/snd/pcmC0D0p:   guttersnipe  21993 F.... python2.5
/dev/snd/timer:      guttersnipe  21993 f.... python2.5
guttersnipe@guttersnipe ~ $ lsof -n | grep "/dev/snd"
python2.5 21993 guttersnipe   78r      CHR              116,2      0t0      10272 /dev/snd/timer
python2.5 21993 guttersnipe   79u      CHR              116,4      0t0      10476 /dev/snd/pcmC0D0p
python2.5 21993 guttersnipe   80u      CHR              116,7      0t0      10466 /dev/snd/controlC0
guttersnipe@guttersnipe ~ $ kill 21993

Source:
http://alsa.opensrc.org/index.php/FAQ#How_can_I_find_which_processes_are_using_Alsa_devices.3F