Bug#293751: asterisk: chan_alsa.so hogs the soundcard

[Hans Fugal]

Package: asterisk
Version: 1:1.0.5-1
Severity: normal

chan_alsa.so hogs the soundcard. This is quite normal for an application
but not sociable for a daemon. If the alsa module will be used it's
likely that the user might want to use other sound software as well. 

I recommend opening the soundcard when the channel is opened, and
closing it when the channel is closed, instead of keeping the soundcard
open the entire time asterisk is running. If it can't open input or
output for whatever reason it should issue a warning and continue with
whatever capablities are left.

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 3.1
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (990, 'testing'), (800, 'unstable')
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Kernel: Linux 2.6.10
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8

Versions of packages asterisk depends on:
ii  asterisk-config       1:1.0.5-1          config files for asterisk
ii  asterisk-sounds-main  1:1.0.2-2          Sound files for asterisk
ii  libasound2            1.0.6-2            Advanced Linux Sound Architecture 
ii  libc6                 2.3.2.ds1-18       GNU C Library: Shared libraries an
ii  libedit2              2.9.cvs.20040827-1 BSD editline and history libraries
ii  libgsm1               1.0.10-13          Shared libraries for GSM speech co
ii  libncurses5           5.4-4              Shared libraries for terminal hand
ii  libpq3                7.4.6-2            Shared library libpq.so.3 for Post
ii  libpri1               1.0.2-1            Primary Rate ISDN specification li
ii  libspeex1             1.0.rel.4-1        The Speex Speech Codec
ii  libssl0.9.7           0.9.7d-5           SSL shared libraries
ii  libtonezone1          1:1.0.0-2          tonezone library (runtime)
ii  unixodbc              2.2.4-11           ODBC tools libraries
ii  zlib1g                1:1.2.2-1          compression library - runtime

-- no debconf information