Hi,

I am using etch(kernel 2.6.13) with Xorg and GNOME. Recently I installed some package, which required 'udev' as one of the dependencies. Now after installing udev and the other packages.

Now after installing udev, I find that there is no /dev/dsp file and I can no longer play my audio files through xmms. Before installing udev I was able to play and the device file /dev/dsp file had existed.

Now why does this happen? I have heard lots of about udev and problems related with it. What are some steps which are specific to debian after installing udev?

Are there any other things which I need to take care? Also to get my sound back, do I have to create the device file /dev/dsp (by mknod)? From what I have read about 'udev' which is:
Then why doesn't it creates the /dev/dsp device in my case??

Thank you in advacne.

You installed new kernel so try to run alsaconf from terminal as root. You may have to run(with out ' marks) 'rm /var/lib/alsa/asound.state then /etc/init.d/alsa unload' Then modprobe your sound module to get alsa working again.
The safer way to upgrade Sarge to Etch would have been to change sources.list to point to Etch/testing then apt-get update. Install Etch's aptitude.Log out of desktop,stop gdm or kdm then install xorg then make sure it works. Aptitude --with recommends install linux-image(your 2.6.13version) would install new kernel. Make sure it works ok. Then aptitude --with recommends dist-upgrade. You should see message about purging hotplug,to get rid of hotplug config files. You may have to run upgrade a few times but Etch should have few if any problems. Synaptic can also be used for smart upgrade. Some suggest just ugrading kernel 1st(Etch udev needs 2.6.12 or better kernel) then do dist-upgrade. Good luck.

Same thing happened to me. I'd previously been using oss (I think). Sound now works for me, and I now have these alsa packages installed:

alsa-base
alsa-oss
alsa-utils

And I ran alsaconf like lestoil suggests.