[lug] Sound Alerts

[Tkil]

there are a few answers to "how do i get multiple clients to connect
to the sound output device" question.  some cards actually support
hardware mixing, and some of their drivers allow multiple simultaneous
opens.  i don't know about OSS/Free vs. OSS/Linux vs. kernel drivers,
but i'm pretty sure that ALSA can do that.

there are also software solutions; there used to be a "network sound
daemon" that handled things like this, there is actually an X sound
protocol of some sort, and finally, on linux, there is the E sound
daemon ("esd" or "esound").  

the low-tech solution in your current situation is probably to just
use a lock file against the device, and just do wait loops so all the
alerts go out serially.  this should be pretty easy to code up.

you should be able to search for most of those.  ALSA lives at
www.alsa-project.org.

t.