I recently installed slackware 9.0 and have been having troubles getting my sound to work. I had similar problems with 8.0 on a different box a few month's ago but what i did than doesn't seem to work. I downloaded the alsa drivers from their site and followed the directions for installing the drivers but when i run ./configure it says
"checking for kernel version... The file /lib/modules/2.4.20/build/include/linux/version.h does not exist.
Please, install the package with full kernel sources for your distribution
or use --with-kernel=dir option to specify another directory with kernel
sources (default is /usr/src/linux)."
than if i try to run make it tells me to run configure first. The sound is onboard ac97'. Not sure of the chipset it uses the mohterboard is an aopen ak77 pro. The drivers i was attempthing to use were the via82xx. If anyone has any idea how to get the drivers installed or use alsa drivers that came with slackware and help would be greatly appreciated. thanks
Jeff

have you got the kernel source in /usr/src/linux ?

no i looked it's not there how do i put it there or what do i need to do

You need to find the source for the kernel you are using. Since you are using Slackware I think you are running a vanilla kernel, i.e. a standard kernel.

If so you can find the kernel at http://www.kernel.org
They have archives and mirrors so you will find it there.

To get your kernel version run "uname -r".

Download the tar.bz2 or tar.gz file and extract in your /usr/src folder like this.

# cd /usr/src
then one of these lines depending on what compression the tar file you downloaded had :
# tar zxvf path-to-kernel/kernel-version.tar.gz
or
# tar jxvf path-to-kernel/kernel-version.tar.bz2

Then make sure you have a /usr/src/linux directory. If not then check this :
If you have a directory in /usr/src named 2.4.20 or such then you need to do a symlink to it from /usr/src/linux . Do it like this :

cd /usr/src
ln -s 2.4.20 linux

this makes a link from linux to 2.4.20 . Edit the kernelversion if you do not have 2.4.20. You probably get it

Hope it helped you.

I downloaded the kernel and did exactly what you said but i still get the same error i looked where the file it is looking for (The file /lib/modules/2.4.20/build/include/linux/version.h does not exist.) is supposed to be and it doesn't seem to be there. any ideas
thanks
jeff

*what kernel are you running?
*what is the content of your /lib/modules ?

Are you running SuSE?

Oops nm...just re-read your post

I'm running kernel 2.4.20. /lib/modules contains a directory 2.4.20

try to configure alsa with --with-kernel=/usr/src/linux (or where you put your kernel source)

./configure --with-kernel=/usr/src/linux

i figure out that i needed to run make dep in the kernel source directory to get version.h so once i had that it would run but then as i went through the installation when i got to modprobe i get this error

root@woodi2259:/usr/src/alsa/alsa-utils-0.9.1# modprobe snd-via82xx
modprobe: Can't locate module snd-via82xx

I've tried using driver versions 0.9.1 0.9.5 and 0.9.6 but i get the same error on all of them i'm following the exact instructions from the alsa site
thanks
jeff

Well im having so much trouble getting all this running i think slackwares just too much for a newb. Maybe in a few months or a year or something once i have a better idea of whats going on i'll be able to use it. I'm switching to redhat tonight hopefully that will make things easier on me. Thanks for the help
Jeff