You're right. My fault. tail won't stop unless you hit Ctrl+C.
modprobesound.log being empty is a good sign: this means that the modprobe commands gave no errors. As for ksound.log, it does not say a lot, except that the module loaded correctly, which should mean that: 1/ this is the right module, and 2/ it IS loaded.
And according to this line in your /etc/modprobe.conf:
this also means that hopefully "alsactl restore" was run correctly.
SO...
The problem does seem to come from the software side. I see two solutions:
- either your modules options are not correctly set,
- or your mixer settings (which are saved on unloading of the sound module).
Either of which is somehow corrected by the alsaplayer...

First thing, I would change some things in your /etc/modprobe.conf. Replace:
with:
The alias things are standard ALSA config, AFAIK. And I removed the ">/dev/null 2>&1" because there's no reason why errors should be hidden. This keeps you from finding where problems are.

After reboot, I would start alsamixer, and change mixer settings to be OK for playing sound, and just after that, run "alsactl store" once as root.

Now, what happens after reboot? And if things still are not as you want, what is the new content of the two .log files if you do the same as before? (now we should have more information in case of failure)

Yves.

To those who have been helping me out, my apologies for being off the air for a few days. YinYeti, I tried what you described, no joy I'm afraid. Now when I run the commands, both files are empty.

ok, new info. Audacity will record once I run alsamixer and set the capture level to max. no surprise there I guess, but it was a surprise to me to find that there were more settings (including the "capture" setting) in alsamixer than those that fit on the screen - scrolling right beyond the screen margins hadn't occurred to be before I read it in another thread.

So, I have hiked up the capture setting, run "alsactrl store" and found on another, older thread here that to use these stored settings requires the command "alsactrl restore", which I have put in my user .bashrc file so it gets executed when I logon (that's right, isn't it?)

BUT, that doesn't actually solve the problem. As long as i boot and go straight to audacity without using another fedora-supplied audio package (controlled by arts I suppose), audacity will record. If I use any sound package other than audacity, I need to set the capture level in alsamixr or run "alsactl restore" again before audacity will work. Is this just the inevitable result of FC2's having arts as its native sound controller and alsa being a imported package?

I guess I could set up and alias in the .bashrc file that combines alsactl restore with calling audacity, but then I'd have to call it from the CLI rather than the GUI menu.

Without wanting to sound ungrateful, I kind of feel I'm wasting other people's time here with a very minor problem - I didn't think the thread would run to two pages of posts. At least I know a workaround for this, there's far more important problems out there! Thanks for all the help, I appreciate it.

this fixed the problem i had with having to run alsaconf every time i rebooted if i wanted to use audacity at all. THANKS! ive been struggling with this for about 7 hours straight, trying everything i could imagine or find. painfully easy solution, but now i can sleep. THANKS! and give it a whirl if you haven't already.

~ brian

You're welcome! I'm glad to help when I can.

Yves.