problem with sound (esound) since a few days

[Uwe Dippel <udippel@uniten.edu.my>]

Though I didn't change anything on purpose; just the usual upgrades, I
lost my sound a few days ago.
Only today is the time to check it:

esd doesn't start any longer (it always did):

$ esd &
[1] 28425
$ /dev/dsp: No such device


Esound is and remains installed:

# apt-get install esound
Reading Package Lists... Done
Building Dependency Tree... Done
esound is already the newest version.
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.


Quite a few modules are loaded:

# lsmod | grep snd
snd_intel8x0m          20264  0
snd_intel8x0           36460  0
snd_ac97_codec         70020  2 snd_intel8x0m,snd_intel8x0
snd_pcm_oss            55048  0
snd_mixer_oss          20096  1 snd_pcm_oss
snd_pcm                98728  3 snd_intel8x0m,snd_intel8x0,snd_pcm_oss
snd_timer              25668  1 snd_pcm
snd_page_alloc         11752  3 snd_intel8x0m,snd_intel8x0,snd_pcm
gameport                4704  1 snd_intel8x0
snd_mpu401_uart         7968  1 snd_intel8x0
snd_rawmidi            25156  1 snd_mpu401_uart
snd_seq_device          8200  1 snd_rawmidi
snd                    57156  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              10336  1 snd


Finally, the lspci -v gives me:

0000:00:1f.5 Multimedia audio controller:
Intel Corp. 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) AC'97 Audio Controller
(rev 01)
        Subsystem: Dell: Unknown device 0139
        Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 0, IRQ 7 I/O ports at
        d800 [size=256]
        I/O ports at dc40 [size=64]
        Memory at faeff800 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=512] Memory at
        faeff400 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=256] Capabilities: [50]
        Power Management version 2


Any help ?