----- Original Message -----
From: Trey Gruel
Last Friday I compiled a new kernel to add framebuffer support on my SuSE 8.0 system. I have been running vmlinuz-2.4.18-4GB. I did a "make bzImage modules modules_install" but before installing the new kernel, I had to shutdown the machine so my computer room could be used as a guest room. When I rebooted on Sunday, sound would not start up, and I get the error message "could not find snd-sb16". (I have a Creative Labs> SoundBlaster16 card installed.)
I tried to fix this by running alsaconf, but it too complains that it can't find snd-sb16. Yast2 also would not configure sound, giving me an error message indicating that the module was not found or the IRQ was incorrectly set. Using find, I tried searching for snd-sb16.*, but it is not found. A reinstall of all things alsa also did not work.
Can someone offer me a clue as to how to get sound working again on my box?
this could be one of two things that i can think of, both of which have the same effect:
if you are upgrading your kernel to a new version, a new /lib/modules subdirectory is created for the new kernel. alsa is not actually part of the 2.4 kernel (got merged in 2.5) so you need to download the modules from http://alsa-project.org and install them.
I tend to think this wasn't it. Before I did the kernel and module compile and the module_install, I had sound working. So the modules had to be there. Also, I only have one modules directory, /lib/modules/2.4.18-4GB, which is correct for the SuSE default kernel I have installed. I will try doing a refresh of the alsa files off my install CDROM again, and see if that helps. If not, I will go to alsa-project.org and get the modules there.
if you are recompiling the default suse kernel, the modules_install part of the make process cleans out the old modules before installing the new ones. you need to re-install the alsa drivers either by downloading the drivers as above, or re-installing the rpm that comes with suse.
any time i recompile my kernel for whatever reason, i have to re- install the kernel modules for both alsa and my nvidia card. quick and simple, just one more thing i have to remember.
Well, I could see where this would be a useful feature, if one were aware of it. Unfortunately, I wasn't aware of it and did not take appropriate measures. Is this a feature of the normal linux kernel makefile modules_install, or is it a SuSE tweak? Thanks, Sean Theo. Sean Schulze theodore.schulze@us.army.mil