Hi,
Sound is not coming from the speakers of my pc, due to driver not installed. Even after logging on as su, and doing a modprobe for ac97, it still says sound is disabled. could someone in the forum help me?
Thank you.

You are using RedHat 9

What kind of sound card-chip do you have?
What is the output of lspci?
You may have to do a /sbin/lspci if it is not in your path.

Give more info so someone with your hardware can help you.

Hi,
Here is the output of lspci from my pc:

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corp. 82845 845 (Brookdale) Chipset Host Bridge (rev 03)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corp. 82845 845 (Brookdale) Chipset AGP Bridge (rev 03)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corp. 82801BA/CA/DB PCI Bridge (rev 12)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corp. 82801BA ISA Bridge (LPC) (rev 12)
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corp. 82801BA IDE U100 (rev 12)
00:1f.2 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82801BA/BAM USB (Hub #1) (rev 12)
00:1f.4 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82801BA/BAM USB (Hub #2) (rev 12)
00:1f.5 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corp. 82801BA/BAM AC'97 Audio (rev 12)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV5M64 [RIVA TNT2 Model 64/Model 64 Pro] (rev 15)
02:08.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corp. 82801BA/BAM/CA/CAM Ethernet Controller (rev 03)
02:09.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Texas Instruments TSB12LV26 IEEE-1394 Controller (Link)
02:0b.0 Ethernet controller: Linksys Network Everywhere Fast Ethernet 10/100 model NC100 (rev 11)

Thank you.

ac97 is not a real driver. Its an audio codec standard. What you want is snd-intel8x0 for ALSA or intel8x0 for OSS. I suggest downloading the latest ALSA drivers. Read the ALSA documentation on your module (driver) on how to install it and setup it.

00:1f.5 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corp. 82801BA/BAM AC'97 Audio (rev 12)

This PIII machine that I am using has that sound controller.
Just for your info, a modern version of RHEL, Fedora, Centos, White Box comes with support for that sound chip.

Hi,
The following output results from trying to do a configure after doing tar:

$ ./configure
checking for gcc... gcc
checking for C compiler default output... a.out
checking whether the C compiler works... yes
checking whether we are cross compiling... no
checking for suffix of executables...
checking for suffix of object files... o
checking whether we are using the GNU C compiler... yes
checking whether gcc accepts -g... yes
checking for gcc option to accept ANSI C... none needed
checking for ranlib... ranlib
checking for a BSD-compatible install... /usr/bin/install -c
checking how to run the C preprocessor... gcc -E
checking for egrep... grep -E
checking for ANSI C header files... yes
checking for an ANSI C-conforming const... yes
checking for inline... inline
checking whether time.h and sys/time.h may both be included... yes
checking whether gcc needs -traditional... no
checking for current directory... /home/vraghavan/alsa-driver-1.0.9a
checking cross compile...
checking for directory with kernel source... /lib/modules/2.4.20-6/build
checking for directory with kernel build...
checking for kernel version... The file /lib/modules/2.4.20-6/build/include/linu
x/version.h does not exist.
Please, install the package with full kernel sources for your distribution
or use --with-kernel=dir option to specify another directory with kernel
sources (default is /lib/modules/2.4.20-6/build).

The Linux system was installed from a CD and there is no source available with me. Is there a way to solve this?
Thank you.

Find the name kernel headers or similar to it. I suggest upgrading the kernel to the latest 2.4.x version. You will have to configure and compile the kernel because redhat has stop supporting its download editions. The new Redhat download editions is Fedora. I do not suggest upgrading to Fedora because like Windows upgrades the upgrade may have some quirks. I recommend doing a full Fedora install.