Some googling around came up with one solution that seems to work, adding the code below to the /etc/init.d/alsasound script in the start section.
if [ ! -c /dev/dsp ]; then mknod -m 0666 /dev/dsp c 14 3 $0 restart fi
That seems like a kludge though, since it doesn't really address whatever is really wrong. Is anyone aware of a better solution? There is nothing wrong, I think. It's a consequence of the ugly udev subsystem, used instead of the normal /dev without any real need. (That's the main reason why I don't recommend SUSE any more to my customers). You may choose to tell udev to make the node, though I never tried
On Sun, 12 Nov 2006 21:42:24 -0800
Scott Leighton