Hi all,

I recently bought a Dell 10v netbook and put Debian lenny on it. I got everything up and running, except that sound doesn't work. Two links I found said that the solution was to download alsa-drivers, alsa-lib, and alsa-util from the ALSA website and ./configure && make && make install:

http://www.mydellmini.com/forum/othe...-mini-10v.html

http://wiki.debian.org/InstallingDeb...nspironMini10v

Another source says this can be fixed on Etch by recompiling alsa from source:

http://www.joeldare.com/wiki/linux:i...er_debian_etch

However, I'm running stable lenny, and I'd rather do things the "right" way instead of doing a regular make install. Is there a way to grab the binary packages from testing/unstable and install those without problems? If that's not possible, can I grab the source package from testing/unstable and use that? If that's not possible, can I download the source from ALSA's website and build a package myself?

I'm fairly new to Debian and its package management, so I'm not sure how to do any of those things. Suggestions?

Thanks in advance!

I would suggest trying to get sound working with the packages from Lenny to start with.
What have you tried to get sound working?.
Have you tried running alsaconf as root?,have you checked the volume levels are not muted by running alsamixer?.
I'm guessing as it's a netbook you have speakers built in?.

As you are running Lenny/Stable i would not suggest installing packages from Testing or Unstable.
If you need more up-to date versions of packages you can use Debian backports:

http://www.backports.org/dokuwiki/doku.php

Or if a package is not available there you can backport the package yourself.Here's a good guide:

http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=38976

I have tried alsaconf as root which identified the card and set things up (with the snd-hda-intel module people say is the one for this card), but still no sound. I checked alsamixer as well. Speakers are built in. I checked backports but they don't have the alsa packages. I also tried recompiling alsa-source using module-assistant, but that didn't fix anything either.

I guess I need to look into building a package myself...

After experimenting with lots of different package creation options, I finally got it to work:

- Downloaded alsa-driver from alsa's website
- Untarred the tar file
- Installed checkinstall
- Created/installed the package with: checkinstall --dpkgflags "--force-overwrite"
- Restarted

When Debian Security released a kernel update, I had to do:

- aptitude remove alsa-driver
- aptitude update && aptitude safe-upgrade (to install the kernel upgrade)
- Repeat the steps above (installing over the kernel files)

Sort of hacky, but works when the other solutions don't.