My system is pretty wierd. When i use discover1 i get ethernet working, when i use discover (2.x) i get sound working, but no ethernet. So i basically have to choose between:
discover1: ethernet but no sound
discover (2.x): sound but no ethernet
I tried downloading etherconf to manage ethernet with discover (2.x) but to no avail. I do however get sound if i run alsaconf with discover1 and then alsamixer. How can i get around this? either by making sound work with discover1 or by making ethernet work with discover... It's a real pain in the ass, thanks.

Oh btw, whenever i do apt-get install discover it loads 4 modules and messes with my screen (background and buttons disappear, and if i'm in the console my entier screen goes black, i just see the cursor). Both lspci outputs using discover1 and discover (2.x) are the same so it's prett wierd... thanks again.

EDIT: BTW using nforce2 chipset for both sound and ethernet, without installing anything else, but it worked once like this (then stopped working).

Hi.
sorry I dont know much about discover but what happens if you load the modules manually?
for your network: modprobe forcedeth
sound: modprobe snd-intel8x0;modprobe snd-pcm-oss;modprobe snd-mixer-oss;modprobe snd-seq-oss

loading them manually doesn't do anything, because discover already loads them. I was thinking that the best way to work with this is to get sound working with discover1. If i manually alsaconf to configure alsa every reboot it works, but there should be a way to automatically do this. Every time i run alsaconf it rewrites the mod list, but when discover runs at boot time it overwrites it screwing up the past configuration. What do you think could be a solution?

I would disable discover, you actually don't need it. So, disable discover and load the modules using /etc/modules.conf. The only disadvantage using this method is that new hardware isn't automatically detected.

Can you disable it or do you mean apt-get remove discover1? I'll try it, then by running alsaconfig it'll stay permanent, and when i get new hardware i'll just reinstall discover and get it working. Hope this works, thanks.

BTW does discover play an important role in usb hardware detection?

Well, you actually don't have to reinstall discover when you get new hardware. As I said, the only disadvantage of not using discover is that hardware isn't "automatically" detected an installed. So, when you add new hardware you just have to install it manually (by loading the correct module via '/etc/modules). This way you can actually control which modules are loaded and which are not. Plus, it gives you some insight how Linux actually works. It may be a bit of practice (and a lot of reading), but knowing what a system actually does is an advantage for me. This way it's also easier to troubleshoot things when they don't work.

Try to search (on Google for example) on how to load modules using Debian. It's worth it.

Thatś wierd, i just rebooted without discover1 and after using alsaconf and my alsa still didn't load at boot time... Might be some program conflict or something like that. About hte modules, i'll try to manually load them, but if i can't get one to load sometime then i'll resort to my discover to do the dirty work for me .

About the ALSA problem, do you actually save the ALSA settings after configuring them? If I recall correctly there is a program called 'alsastore' (or something like that) that you have to run after you've configured ALSA.

I thought alsa automatically saved when you logged off, that it was in the shutdown script to automatically save, sorta like saving the mixer settings and things like that. I tried alsastore and alsasave, neither worked. Maybe there is another command.

What typically happens in this situations is that discover AND/OR hotplug are loading the older OSS drivers for your sound card and then trying to load the ALSA drivers on top of it (which, obviously, doesn't work). Both discover and hotplug have a method to "blacklist" specific drivers. For discover, you have to edit the file /etc/discover.conf and add "skip <old oss driver module>" at the end (for me, it's "skip maestro3"). In hotplug, you can edit /etc/hotplug/blacklist and add the name of the old oss driver module at the end of the long list (for me, it's "maestro3").

To figure out which driver name to add to them, type lsmod at the prompt and find the module that has the same name as your alsa driver, but without the "SND_" on the front of it (the alsa drivers typically put snd_ at the beginning of the name now). You can also watch discover and hotplug as the system boots up to try and catch the name in the text that flys by.

Hope that helps. It sure works for me (on multiple systems).

P.S. after doing this, alsaconf will save your settings correctly.

What happens if you store your ALSA settings using the command 'alsactl store' (that is the correct command, I was at work behind a Windows machine when I typed my last reply, so I couldn't check the command)?

That works, i'll check next time i restart, thanks.