I have been working on this problem for a few days now and am pretty flustered. I have a fresh install of RH8 running on kernel 2.6.3 and am trying to configure ALSA. When compiling the kernel, I selected M (modular) for sound support, and ensured all other sound options were blank. I checked lsmod and soundcore is running. I then downloaded ALSA 1.02c (latest), ran ./configure --with-path-to-kernel-source, make and make install. I did not run the ./snddevices script because I am sure DEVFS is running. At that point, I ran ALSACONF 0.43b (also latest). I had to manually select the sound card, an Ensoniq 5880 (ens1371), and answered yes to the rest of the options. I then get a "Loading driver
./ALSAConf: line 880 start: command not found,
setting the pcm volume to 100% and the master output volume to 50%
./ALSAConf: line 882 amixer: command not found,
Could not initialize the mixer, the card was probably not detected correctly" error. I checked lsmod again, the soundcore module is still running. The sound card works on the previous kernel. I have an nvidia card and installed the latest drivers. I have seen other posts where there may be a conflict, but none of the resolutions seem to work for me. What am I missing? Thanks in advance.

Could do a "dmesg | grep -A 4 ALSA" and post the output? Might be helpful in pinning the problem down....

I tried the command but got no output. I assume if I made a typo I would get an error. Is that the case?

easy to fix........recompile your kernel with sound support direct not as a module......
2. enable all the ALSA componants as modules so alsaconf can find them.

Thanks for the help. I took some time off to clear my head and got it working. The trick is to select module for sound support (M) and not select ASLA (leave blank) when compiling the kernel. Any future noobies looking for good instructions, I suggest checking www.alsa-project.org and select by sound card.