alsa + udev not setting up devices

[Rob Benton <rob.benton@conwaycorp.net>]

I've got a laptop I'm trying to get alsa set up on.  For whatever reason 
the sarge d-i rc2 iso did not install alsa.  So I installed alsa-base 
and alsa-utils.  alsaconf detected my onboard intel sound device and 
added an entry for snd-intel8x0 to /etc/modutils/alsa-base.  But udev is 
not creating the sound devices I need on boot.  Whenever I try running 
alsamixer I get this:

alsamixer: function snd_ctl_open failed for default: No such device

I don't know if this was the right place to start but I went to /dev and 
ran ./MAKEDEV update.  My cpu pegged at 100% and the process hung with 
this output:

./MAKEDEV: don't know what "alsa" is
./MAKEDEV: don't know what "drm" is
./MAKEDEV: don't know what "devfs" is


And here's an lsmod | grep snd:

snd_intel8x0m          18632  0
snd_intel8x0           33068  0
snd_ac97_codec         59268  2 snd_intel8x0m,snd_intel8x0
snd_pcm_oss            48168  0
snd_mixer_oss          16640  1 snd_pcm_oss
snd_pcm                85384  3 snd_intel8x0m,snd_intel8x0,snd_pcm_oss
snd_timer              23172  1 snd_pcm
snd_page_alloc         11144  3 snd_intel8x0m,snd_intel8x0,snd_pcm
gameport                4736  1 snd_intel8x0
snd_mpu401_uart         7296  1 snd_intel8x0
snd_rawmidi            23204  1 snd_mpu401_uart
snd_seq_device          7944  1 snd_rawmidi
snd                    50660  10 
snd_intel8x0m,snd_intel8x0,snd_ac97_codec,snd_pcm_oss,snd_mixer_oss,snd_pcm,snd_timer,snd_mpu401_uart,snd_rawmidi,snd_seq_device
soundcore               9824  1 snd