Trying to install Mandrake 10 CE on a system with soundblaster sb awe 32 card is giving a problem. The same card works fine for Mandrake 9.1.

In Mdk 10, after using sndconfig (it is an ISA card), the sound sample plays, but after that there are a slew of error messages and the system just hangs.

Below is the /etc/modules.conf in Mandrake 9.1 where the card is working fine..

...
alias sound-slot-0 sb
options sound dmabuf=1
options opl3 io=0x388
alias synth0 awe_wave
post-install awe_wave /bin/sfxload /etc/midi/GU11-ROM.SF2
options sb isapnp=1


Any advice or suggestions please?

Thanks in advance.

It's an ISA card....? Didn't I hear somewhere that isapnp support was removed or disabled in MDK 10?

Could you possibly post the /etc/modules.conf for the 10.0 install that doesn't work? It would help us to compare the two.

I'd also like to see the .config file for this kernel, to see if isapnp is enabled or not. If your /boot folder is a separate partition, you'll have to mount /boot first, as that's where config lives for the most part, before opening a text editor (no need to su to root, we only want to read the file, not edit it) and opening /boot/config.

It's a long file, so look for the "Bus Options" near the top and post that section. I'm guessing that you may see something like
Not helpful if you actually have an ISA card on the system (whereas this is set this way on mine because I don't even have any ISA slots, much less cards).

Hope this helps.

Not 100 % sure but now MDK is using ALSA by default.

These are the modules for your sound card :

ALSA portion
alias char-major-116 snd
alias snd-card-0 snd-sbawe
# module options should go here

# OSS/Free portion
alias char-major-14 soundcore
alias sound-slot-0 snd-card-0

# card #1
alias sound-service-0-0 snd-mixer-oss
alias sound-service-0-1 snd-seq-oss
alias sound-service-0-3 snd-pcm-oss
alias sound-service-0-8 snd-seq-oss
alias sound-service-0-12 snd-pcm-oss

Go to Alsa site for more information, hope will help !!

MDK always used ALSA by default (trust me, I know; having a VIA 8233 onboard sound chip, sound did not work under any distribution but Mandrake, because they all used the broken OSS drivers, but Mandrake-- from at least version 9.0-- always installed ALSA and used it as the default driver).

Below are the entries in the modules.conf which is *not* working...

---------------
probeall scsi_hostadapter imm ppa
probeall usb-interface usb-uhci
alias sound-slot-0 sb
options sound dmabuf=1
options opl3 io=0x388
alias synth0 awe_wave
post-install awe_wave /bin/sfxload /etc/midi/GU11-ROM.SF2
options sb io=0x220 irq=5 dma=0 dma16=0 mpu_io=0x330
-------------------

Here are the entries in modprobe.preload

# /etc/modprobe.preload: kernel modules to load at boot time.
#
# This file should contain the names of kernel modules that are
# to be loaded at boot time, one per line. Comments begin with
# a `#', and everything on the line after them are ignored.
# this file is for module-init-tools (kernel 2.5 and above) ONLY
# for old kernel use /etc/modules

scsi_hostadapter
intel-agp

------------------
Kernels > 2.5 do not use modules.conf, it seems... and sndconfig version present makes the entries in modules.conf only...

Any suggestions?

Thanks in advance!

According to the README for module-init-tools (which is referred to in modprobe.preload, which is why I checked it):

.

I then looked at my modprobe.conf, and lo and behold, that is where my ALSA drivers are being loaded from these days. There's a note at the top of the file that says you shouldn't edit modprobe.conf yourself, but once you convert modules.conf, you may not have to anyway.

Hope this helps.

Finally, edititing and adding the entry for sb in modprobe.conf and modprobe.preload manually was the answer.
Rebooted, and the sb module is loaded.

So, sndconfig-0.70-7mdk which is present with the distro does not update modprobe.preload, restricting itself to adding entries to modules.conf (which only works pre 2.5 kernels).

Thanks for all the suggestions and information.

Glad you got it working .