If you are upgrading any kernel from the prepackaged version you should do this first because anything like ALSA or certain video drivers will install into the kernel - if you change kernel you have to reload the drivers manually too.

I recommend installing ALSA from their site and compiling it as per their instructions. Also while your at it - you might consider making a storage partition for your shared stuff if you have not already done that as sharing from /home is not a good idea.

The computer is just my testcomputer at home. I'm the only one that uses it, and basically I'm using it in preparation of hopefully putting Linux on a newer(Dell 4300) computer, as opposed to the Gateway2000 P5 that I'm running Linux on right now.

Mossy, when you say "... you should do this first....", what are you refurring to?

Hmm.... seeing as how this all hasn't been resolved yet, I will just put how I solved my 2.6-test? sound problems, even though I use a sound blaster live card, basic set up should be the same.

First, I made sure I had the at least the required versions of software needed by the new kernel (found in /usr/src/linux-2.6.0-test7/Documentation/Changes for 2.6-test7 kernel) and most especially the module-init-tools package. I believe the modprobe in the module-init-tools package uses /lib/modules/modprobe.conf mentioned by ghostwalker.

In the kernel configuration (I used 'make menuconfig'), under "Device Drivers-->Sound", I selected sound card support as a module, and in "Device Drivers-->Sound-->Advanced Linux Sound Architecture", I selected EVERYTHING as a module that I could, and some (like OSS API emulation and OSS Sequencer API) that couldn't be modules. "Verbose printk" and "Debug" I didn't select since I didn't need em. "Device Drivers-->Sound-->Advanced Linux Sound Architecture-->Generic devices", I selected everything as a module. "Device Drivers-->Sound-->Advanced Linux Sound Architecture-->PCI devices", I selected only my sound card as a module, but you would select "C-Media 8738, 8338" for the snd-cmipci driver, as schaez said. I selected nothing in "Device Drivers-->Sound-->Advanced Linux Sound Architecture-->ALSA USB devices".

I did the whole kernel compile thingy, made sure it boots and all that jazz, and ran "sh /usr/src/linux-2.6.0-test7/scripts/MAKEDEV.snd" as the root user as per the documentation in "/usr/src/linux-2.6.0-test7/Documentation/sound/alsa/ALSA-Configuration.txt". If I were you, at this point I would also check out the documentation in "/usr/src/linux-2.6.0-test7/Documentation/sound/alsa/CMIPCI.txt", or maybe even before you compiled the kernel. To specifically get my card to get up, since it was done with modules, I had to figure out the new way to write the modules configuration file. As mentioned above, and by ghostwalker, this config file is /lib/modules/modprobe.conf and completely replaces /etc/modules.conf. Now, I also knew of the sound card matrix at http://www.alsa-project.org and went through the suggestion there for the corresponding settings to allow the kernel to start all the sound modules automatically, though my first few attempts failed miserably even though I followed everything to the letter. Eventually, I just rewrote the corresponding sound stuff in /lib/modules/modprobe.conf to be:

(NOTE: the "\" in the last three lines were so not to make one ridiculously long line; in my conf file on my system, that's just one long line)

Mind you, the above is for a sound blaster live card, but you would just replace all instances above of 'snd-emu10k1' with 'snd-cmipci'. Other than that, I looked at the link to the snd-cmipci alsa info schaez linked above, and it's practically identical to the sound blaster live info. Note that the above is the only config I found from tedious trial and error to work on my system, so as usual, YMMV.

I then tested that module auto-loading worked properly by using the 'play' command from the sox package on several wav files, being sure all relevant modules were not loaded for the test.

After this, I used alsamixer to unmute and change my volume settings, and then I used as the root user 'alsactl' to save my settings to /etc/asound.state (i.e. alsactl -f /etc/asound.state store). I have in my startup scripts the command ''alsactl -F -f /etc/asound.state restore".

And then for me, since I used debian (and note the following is just about the only debian specific thing I'll mention; all of the preceding is distro agnostic), I discovered /etc/modprobe.d directory, update-modules command, and /etc/init.d/{alsasound,alsa} that handle the alsactl command automagically, all of which just made my life a whole lot easier.

Note that all of the preceding is on a system not using devfs. Using devfs, I wouldn't have had as many headaches configuring /lib/modules/modprobe.conf. However, devfs is obsolete in the 2.6 kernel series and from what I hear slated to be replaced by a completely userspace program called udev sometime in the future.

Now all of this is what I would have done in r_jensen11's position (though with considerable more time and effort spent in trial and error than I communicated), and have done back when 2.6.0-test5 had just been released. And now I'm happy to have full sound capabilities on my system!

Now, if I managed to help anyone at all with my experiences with this problem, me = happy camper

EDIT: I don't think alsa driver module packages from the alsa website will work with the 2.6 series kernel seeing as how it's already a part of the kernel and never mind the new format of kernel modules...

However, you will definitely need the alsa-utils and alsa-tools to get the alsamixer and alsactl programs if your distro doesn't have 'em in some package or other.

"Mossy, when you say "... you should do this first....", what are you refurring to?"


I am referring to upgrading the kernel before anything - then get all your drivers installed.

Thanks Smokey! I already reinstalled Slack9.1, and now I'm compiling the kernel again. When I run it troubles, I'll follow your lead!