alsa loads manually but will not load in run level
 

I have googled this question and tried various options until I want to scream. ALSA will not load automatically on my computer. If I boot my computer, I have no sound. When I run any of the following: alsaconf, alsa, or alsa-utils, sound immediately starts just fine. But I have to run that manually after every boot. I have put alsa-utils (and have also tried just alsa) in my default run level (5) but I still have no sound when the computer is done booting and sound still starts the minute I manually run alsaconf, alsa or alsa-utils. What would cause this?

to save alsa settings.........

Thank you. I run alsactl store after I run alsaconf. when I reboot, I still have no sound until I manually run any of the following: alsa, alsa-utils, or alsaconf.

I meant to say in my original post that I am running Linux 6.11.10 and KDE 3.3.2

It just makes no sense at all that alsa can be loaded manually but not loaded at boot in run level 5. Anyway, thanks again for your answer.

Perhaps this is a udev/modules problem, if your system does use udev for device node management, here's a possible scenario..

Your init script tries to start alsa, the kernel loads the modules required for alsa and then calls udev to create the device nodes, udev is quite slow, alsactl is not, udev fails to create the device nodes in time and alsactl fails. Later when you run it manually the modules are loaded, the device nodes are in place and it works fine. The solution is preload the alsa modules before the system udev script is run, configuring this tends to be system speciifc, on an LFS system the modules to be preloaded are listed in /etc/sysconfig/modules. Of course YMMV.

HTH

Mad.

This is an interesting answer but I am too much of a noob to know what to do with it. Where I was loading alsa-utils was just before the last two things loading in run level 5, kdm and xdm so I don't think the script is trying to start alsa before much else but I do not see anything called udev in there so I think this is just a case where my ignorance is hampering me from understanding this answer. Assuming you are absolutely correct, what are the steps I would need to correct this. And thank you very much for giving me a reply. Any little hints that help me along are appreciated very much.