No sound in Debian ETCH with amd64 nvidia sound card
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Ok, so you've got all the needed modules, none are loaded which isn't surprising with no soundcard detected.
If alsa doesn't detect (and even less support) your sound card you have to upgrade your kernel, there's no point loosing time fiddling with modprobe.d and so.
You can either download the kernel and eventually necessary dependencies from Etch-backport (try here, end of the list for etch-backport) or add the right repository to your source.list.
You'd better stick to etch-backport if you want to stay with "Stable", if you try installing Lenny's kernel you'd better go entirely for Lenny since I think you will have to upgrade important packages (libc6, gcc...).
If your card is supported by the 2.6.22 alsa then installing it and calling "alsaconf" should do the trick.
It's a simple process if you add a etch-backport repository, apt-get or aptitude will take care of the "details" like upgrading you grub menu or creating the initial ram disk that match the new kernel. After the installation all you'll have to do is reboot and choose your new kernel in the grub menu. You may have to compile again any foreign module or application you installed manually from sources (like nvidia or ati drivers), if any.
If you choose to download the new kernel as a .deb file, then you can use the command "dpkg -i linux-image-xxxxx.deb", where xxxx is the number of the new kernel, to install it. But in this case you have to take care of any dependency yourself, so be sure to check all of them from the debian packages download page and look on your system if you have the good versions, otherwise download and install them before the kernel.
I would highly recommend going with the apt-get or aptitude way !
If in doubt, ask for tips, kernel is indeed a very important part of your system ! But again with apt it isn't a big deal.
Thank you thveillon, I spent the day ignoring my girlfriend and googling 'how to update kernel-image-2.6.18-amd64' and now my sound works! I had to retrace my steps a little bit and reinstall my Nvidia drivers and readjust my xorg.conf, but I just rebooted into gnome and everything works great. Thank you all so much.
Very happy to read that, have a good time with Debian ! Sorry for your girlfriend, but this is common symptom of ongoing addiction. Tell her there is a women.debian project, maybe you'll be ignored soon
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