ALSA

["Rod MacPherson" <rod@macphersonclan.com>]

I've seen a number of people complaining about also not loading properly
recently.

I too had that problem. OSS worked, but ALSA didn't.

After much searching and experimentation here is the solution:

ALSA will not load if OSS is alrady loaded.

If you are using a stock 2.6 kernel OSS and ALSA are both enabled, and OSS
will try to load first.

There are two places to try to prevent this behavior without having to
recompile your kernel with OSS disabled.

The first is /etc/hotplug/blacklist
add a line with just the name of the OSS version of the sound driver
module for your soundcard/chipset. (in my case, since mine is an AC97
compatible chipset it was "i810_audio")

The second is /etc/discover.conf
add a skip line for your OSS module
(in my case it was "skip i810_audio")

This should prevent the system from discovering it as well as prevent
hotplug from loading it later in the bootup process.

Best of luck to all those who were having ALSA troubles.
-- 
Rod /|\