No local audio when logging in remotely?

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Hi all,

I have an odd problem. I have a headless Opensuse 11.1 server that I use to run my MP3s through my stereo. I connect to it using VNC on my wireless laptop and run Amarok to play my playlist.

The problem I have is that when I open a VNC session on my user account, it appears that sound is entirely disabled. Kmix does not show up in my taskbar at all, and I get an error when I try to run Amarok. However, if I run a VNC session as root, everything works fine and the local audio plays through my stereo as it should.

I guess I should also mention that when I log on locally, audio works no problem for my user account. However, I don’t even have a monitor hooked up to the machine anymore so I can’t really log in locally to start VNC.

I figured it may be a permissions issue, but I can’t figure out for the life of me what it is. All my logs give me a generic “denied” error. I tried adding my user account to the “audio” users group, but that just created more issues, without solving the problem. I also made all my /dev/any audio related paths rwx for all users and groups as well. Still nothing. I’m stumped. Any ideas?

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Anyone? Bueller…? Bueller…?

A couple additional bits of info I may have left out…

OpenSUSE 11.1, running KDE 4. Typically I either telnet or ssh into the box to be able to start the VNC session, however, even when I enable remote administration, if I log on as root I get audio… as my user account I do not. So it HAS to be a permissions thing. I just can’t for the life of me figure out what it is. Like I said, I made /dev/dsp, /dev/mixer, and /dev/snd/* all rwx for all users and groups. Still nothing. Adding my user account to the audio group in /etc/group does nothing either. Am I missing something? I don’t want to keep logging in as root. HELP!

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One last thing…

Is there any audio-specific log I can check to see what errors I get? The only logs I was really checking was amarok, but is there any other log file I can check or create to narrow down the issue?

Thanks