Im using plain OSS drivers, no esd or artsd or nas or whatever.
Other programs (xmms, mplayer,...) work, vendetta just says
/dev/dsp: Device or resource busy
(according to lsof, /dev/dsp* are not used...)

Any hints?

I've got the same problem - once a program have used the soundcard, some other programs won't "reopen" it. Try restarting your soundmodule:

rmmod "soundmodulename"; insmod "soundmodulename";

I have this alias'ed until i've figured the problem out.
I actually don't think this is a problem with vendetta but maybe the oss drivers, since it happens to some other programs too.

EDIT: Use 'lsmod' to see modules loaded, if you don't know what module your sndcard use...

Thanks, that did it :)
So just in case anybody has the same problem:

Add the following lines to /etc/sudoers:
ALL ALL=NOPASSWD: /sbin/rmmod i810_audio
ALL ALL=NOPASSWD: /sbin/modprobe i810_audio

And use the following script to start vendetta:
#!/bin/sh
# reinit sound
killall xmms gkrellm >/dev/null 2>&1
sudo rmmod i810_audio
sudo modprobe i810_audio
/etc/init.d/aumix start
xgamma -gamma 1.3
/usr/local/bin/vendetta
xgamma -gamma 1.0

(of course you have to adjust it :)

Can sb. explain why/how this works? I haven't had that problem with any program before...

I can't really point the finger at it directly, but it seems like some programs "sit" on the card, even they are killed. Like they "forget" to close the pipe to dsp, or maybe the driver does - don't know. It's weird though.

EDIT: glad it helped you =)

Quake2 used to segfault like this, not the relnevs the "official" i.d. release (very dated, very, very dated. Pre glibc2 (libc5) days). Every time i wanted to play it i had to (rm&mod)probe to get sound.

Straight OSS may not work at all however. I found that with a straight OSS install (no ALSA->OSS emulation) vendetta wouldnt run at all, never being able to assign a socket to dsp for use. Installing the latest and greatest ALSA got me up with OSS emulation and poof, vendetta worked. It may be something strange with how OSS handles sockets, Im not sure, but do know the devs here looked at my bug logs like I was crazy and couldnt figure out why vendetta couldnt open sound. 8)

I have OSS in my kernel and all the alsa+alsa-oss packages installed and I got good sound everywhere.

nod@rogue

alsa is gooooooooood. it is your freeeeeeeeeeeend 8)