How do you update your sound drivers

I am using RED HAT linux with an onboard sound card.

There is a number of sound problems when running games and from some of the error output it suggests that I should upgrade the drivers.

where can I find some generic onboard sound drivers for my card?

Well, what sound card is it? What drivers are being used currently? A little more information would be a good start. If you know what you're looking for, then check out ALSA.

Yes Redhat uses ARTS IIRC, alsa seems to be much better it may be worth installing alsa using apt-get

OK did that (thought you could only use apt-get on Debain), and download the following packages.

1:atrpms-package-config ########################################### [ 20%]
2:atrpms ########################################### [ 40%]
3:strictdep-kernel-kmdl-2########################################### [ 60%]
4:alsa-kmdl-2.4.20-28.9 ########################################### [ 80%]
5:alsa-driver ########################################### [100%]

Will this automatically update the existing drivers to use these ones or is there some more configuration to do?

thanks

here is some more details about the sound card

00:02.7 Multimedia audio controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SiS7012 PCI Audio Accelerator (rev a0)


DRIVER -> i810_audio

Ignore this post.. read the one below

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run alsaconf, should be

/usr/bin/aslaconf

make sure to remove any reference to arts in your /etc/modules.conf

Sorry that was a bit vague, you want to comment out the lines simmilar to this from your /etc/modules.conf before you run alsaconf.

alias sound-slot-0 audigy
post-install sound-slot-0 /bin/aumix-minimal -f /etc/.aumixrc -L >/dev/null 2>&1 || :
pre-remove sound-slot-0 /bin/aumix-minimal -f /etc/.aumixrc -S >/dev/null 2>&1 || :

Then do this

# /usr/bin/killall artsd
# /sbin/rmmod audigy

and replace audigy with the module you commented out in the modules.conf eg. where it says

alias sound-slot-0 audigy

replace audigy with what was in your modules.conf, this will kill any loaded modules (if you have problems with this just reboot and it should not load the modules next time round, this is just a nice way of doing it without rebooting)

Now type

# /usr/sbin/alsaconf

and it hopefully will autodetect your soundcard. Good luck.

did that but the command alsaconf does not exist on my redhat machine. When you use apt-get do you have to install it manually or does it install itself?

my bad, it should be in your sbin not your bin...

and to answer your question it shoudl install automatically.

no not is sbin either

Got it working by compiling from source (dont know what the apt-get program did)

To anyone reading this post I definately reccommend upgrading to alsa as all sound works now.

thanks guys

Excellent news, strange that your apt-get didnt work properly but compiling from source is a better (if not more complicated and longer) way of doing it.