A friend had written to me: "Check lspci for the sound card; and check dmesg for sound card installation. If there is no compatible sound card on the system /dev/dsp will not be created on boot."

lspci
00:05.0 Audio device: nVidia Corporation MCP61 High Definition Audio (rev a2)

edhe@hebrews:~$ dmesg | grep audio
edhe@hebrews:~$ dmesg | grep sound
edhe@hebrews:~$

edhe@hebrews:~$ uname -a
Linux hebrews 2.6.18-5-amd64 #1 SMP Thu May 31 23:51:05 UTC 2007 x86_64 GNU/Linux

Is it that the amd64 processor is not compatible with the nvidia audio device?

I have two AMD Opteron cpus and the nvidia chipset on the motherboard. I have no problem with sound.

It's more likely that the correct driver(s) is/are not loaded.

If you have the hwinfo utility installed, run '/sbin/hwinfo --sound'. It should identify the on-board sound, and tell you which kernel module is needed, and whether or not that module is active.

hebrews:/# hwinfo > /home/edhe/hwinfo
hebrews:/# chown edhe:edhe /home/edhe/hwinfo
hebrews:/#

19: PCI 05.0: 0403 Audio device
[Created at pci.281]
UDI: /org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/pci_10de_3f0
Unique ID: CvwD.8BYhLi16tP3
SysFS ID: /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:05.0
SysFS BusID: 0000:00:05.0
Hardware Class: sound
Model: "Hewlett-Packard Company Audio device"
Vendor: pci 0x10de "nVidia Corporation"
Device: pci 0x03f0
SubVendor: pci 0x103c "Hewlett-Packard Company"
SubDevice: pci 0x2a5c
Revision: 0xa2
Memory Range: 0xfe028000-0xfe02bfff (rw,non-prefetchable)
IRQ: 255 (no events)
Module Alias: "pci:v000010DEd000003F0sv0000103Csd00002A5Cbc04sc03i00"
Config Status: cfg=new, avail=yes, need=no, active=unknown

Does the problem lie with the Config status of 'need=no and active=unknown'?