I have a slight variation on the whole "I can't get ALSA to work under 2.6.0 with the built-in drivers".

I've attempted about a half-dozen kernel 2.6.0 recompiles in order to get ALSA to work under 2.6.0. No dice. I even tried installing the ALSA 1.0.0rc2 drivers and libs afterwards. Again, no dice. The thing is driving me a little batty.

I've noticed a couple of things...

1) When dropline-gnome installed ALSA 0.9.8 under the 2.4.22 kernel, sound stopped working. I uninstalled 0.9.8 and reinstalled the 0.9.6 version that came with my Slack disks and the world was again a pleasant place to be

2) If I do compile ALSA support into the 2.6.0 kernel, when I boot I am told that the version is 0.9.7. Of course, no sound. In fact, it doesn't even detect my audio card.

3) I know ALSA does work, because I have version 0.9.6 (the one that comes with Slack 9.1) working under the 2.4.22 kernel I have installed on the same machine.

To my question: If I were to configure the .config file to build sound support into the kernel (the top level option under Sound), but not choose to build either ALSA or OSS into the kernel or as modules, and then after building and installing the new kernel, then actually build and install the drivers, libs, tools, etc. that come with ALSA 1.0.0rc2, theoretically, should that work?

I noticed on the ALSA site that if "soundcore" isn't loaded (via "modprobe soundcore") before attempting to install the ALSA packages, then you are instructed to go back and compile it into the kernel.

What do you all think?

Last night I did that, compiled the kernel with built-in sound support but no alsa/oss.
then got the 1.0.0rc2, compiled, modprobed for my sound card and everything is nice.
don't forget to unmute using alsamixer or similar.
btw I also compiled the alsa libs and utils

good luck

Hiper --

Thanks for the response. I managed to get a clean, bootable kernel compile today during lunch minus 2.6.0's ALSA drivers (I double checked the syslog and messages to make sure). I have also downloaded all of the 1.0.0rc2 tars and they are waiting for me to build and install them after I get off work today.

From your post is sounds like you compiled and built just the driver, libs, and utils in order to get your sound to work. Or did you also need tools and the OSS compatibility library, too?

Thanks!

Just a follow-up note that I installed the driver, libs, utils, and oss compatability modules and followed the directions on the alsa-project.org website for my soundcard and it worked beatifully.

I did have to add a few lines to my /etc/rc.d/rc.modules file so that when I rebooted I still had sound -- namely the modprobes that the documentation tells you to use to install the new kernel modules...

/sbin/modprobe snd-intel8x0
/sbin/modprobe snd-pcm-oss
/sbin/modprobe snd-seq-oss

For some reason, upon boot-up, snd-mixer-oss is already loaded, so I didn't add that one to the file.

I also added the extra code to my /etc/modules.conf file that the docs suggested.

I'm a happy camper now.