First off, I read the other ALSA thread that is near the top, but my problems don't really related to the ones identified in there so I decided not to hijack that thread.

So...I just installed Debian for the first time, using Sarge's netinstall CD. Everything went smoothly. After installing Fluxbox I went about getting my sound configured. I quickly discovered that it would be much more beneficial for me to try and upgrade from the 2.4 kernel I installed to a new 2.6 kernel(I also have firewire HD's I'll want to mount, and I figured having the new functionality present with the 2.6 kernel would be good in the long run). I had never compiled my own kernel before, but after a few false starts I had it up and running. Everything seems to work, and I was excited when I saw "Soundblaster Audigy" fly by while the system was booting. I loaded up XMMS after bootup and I was disappointed to hear no sound. I loaded up alsamixer and was extremely confused to see the card listed as "Dummy" and chip listed as "Dummy Mixer". I checked my dmesg in /var/log, and here is what pertained to ALSA: So...my Audigy is listed as #2? Still confused, I did more reading from tutorials and HOWTOs. I saw to try to use alsaconf. So I ran alsaconf as root, and after searching for a second it told me "No supported PnP or PCI card found" and then asked if I wanted to search for legacy ISA cards. But...I see the Audigy listed in the dmesg. Also, 4 lines of output are generated while running alsaconf. The first 3 lines say "modinfo: could not find module snd". The last line says "Unload sound driver modules...done". If I load alsamixer with the -c 2 parameter(i.e. # alsamixer -c 2), it lists the card correctly as "Sound Blaster Audigy" and the chip as "TriTech TR28602". But if I change the sound settings in that no change is noticeable. Still absolutely no sound. And nothing is muted.

I am stumped. Like I said, I am new to Debian. I'm not really new to Linux, but it has been a long time since I have used it. I never messed around with the kernel and I didn't really mess around with modules. I've done searches both on these forums and with google, but everything has drawn a blank so far. What am I missing? I am using the 2.6.8 kernel received using apt-get from the Debian servers, and I followed tutorials on compiling and installing packages on Debian. If there is any other info you'll need, just ask. Thanks.

EDIT: Oh oh oh. And I did add my user to the group audio. Forgot to mention that. And...if it would just be easier for me to somehow configure ALSA in the 2.4 kernel rather than trying to figure out the 2.6 kernel problem, I can live with that. Although I would rather stick with the 2.6 kernel just because of the additional features present.

Tried "alsamixer -c 2" ?

Edit: Oops, seems you did. Hmm.. something else..

I guess you also configured XMMS Alsa output plugin to use card #2?

Nope, I haven't tried messing with the XMMS plugin. But I don't think that will fix my systemwide lack of sound. I'll give it a shot(I'm not sure how to do that, but I'll look into it) and report back.

Like I said, though, the rest of my machine won't have sound even if XMMS does.

EDIT: Is there a way to set somewhere what my default card or driver is? Or is the configuration found in my dmesg normal? And why does alsaconf not find any supported cards, yet my system obviously does?

Got it working. I ended up choosing not compile a dummy device into the kernel(duh) and then made sure that XMMS was using the appropriate card as output. And I get sound from everywhere else. Thanks for the XMMS tip, that made XMMS work beautifully.