Sound card not working... must be simple.

[LinuxHawk]

The current system I am using has had SuSE, Mepis, RedHat and they all detected the sound.

I liked Mepis the best and am making a commitment to Debian.
This forum has helped me with most all of my software issues.
Now I just need a nudge in the right direction to get the sound card working.

I cannot find how to make Debian try to detect it.

Any advice on where to look and what I should be doing?
What if any, information can I provide to assist?

Thanks in advance...

Michael Adams, New Port Richey, Florida, USA

[Harold]

Are you using kernel 2.6? If not, you really do want to upgrade from kernel 2.4. Kernel 2.6 *is* available in Sarge. The following directions will work with kernel 2.6 and will *not* work with kernel 2.4.

I'm using Etch; I *think* that the following commands are correct for Sarge. apt-get install linux-sound-base alsa-base alsa-utils alsa-oss. You will need a mixer. I'm not too impressed with alsamixergui. I prefer aumix-gtk. Then, as root, do alsaconf.

[LinuxHawk]

I typed and found the following...

@debian:~$ uname -a
Linux debian 2.4.27-2-386 #1 Mon May 16 16:47:51 JST 2005 i686 GNU/Linux

Looks like I am running 2.4.27 correct?

And if so... is there an apt-get update for moving to 2.6???

Again thanks...

[Harold]

apt-cache search kernel-image-2.6 should give you a list of available kernel images. If the list scrolls off the screen, try apt-cache search kernel-image-2.6 | less, use the up/down arrow keys to scroll and <esc> to get back to the prompt.

[LinuxHawk]

apt-cache search kernel-image-2.6 should give you a list of available kernel images. If the list scrolls off the screen, try apt-cache search kernel-image-2.6 | less, use the up/down arrow keys to scroll and <esc> to get back to the prompt.

It does and I am running an AMD 64

Should I do an apt-get install xxxxxxxx
or apt-get upgrade xxxxxxxxx ??????????

Thanks

[Harold]

You periodically want to do apt-get update && apt-get upgrade. To install a specific package, do apt-get update && apt-get install package_name. Repositories are upgraded once per day, so it does no good to apt-get update more often than that.

AMD-64! Now I'm wondering... I don't think that there was/is an *official* 64-bit version of Sarge. You probably installed the i386 (32-bit) version. Installing the 64-bit kernel is probably not a good idea if you are running a 32-bit OS. I think that I would install kernel-image-2.6-k7.

[LinuxHawk]

Now I am at: < Linux debian 2.6.8-2-386 >

When I rebooted the monitor was goofy, but then I rebooted and watched as there were 2 more choices to boot into.

The 2.6 kernel and the 2.6 kernel in recovery mode in addition to the 2.4 kernels.
I was about to boot into the 2.4 and see if it went back, but tried the 2.6 normal again and it worked great.

I tried about 8 more boot ups in Linux and Windows and all seems awesome.
Debian is really living up the the saying that you never have to re-install it. You can always fix it.