[LAU] Remove generic ALSA driver before compiling new one?

[Florian Hollerweger]

Hi list,

By trying to compile a new alsa-driver-1.0.19 from source on a machine 
with a generic Debian kernel 2.6.24 including ALSA driver 1.0.16, I 
recently managed to trash ALSA on that machine.

I had been optimistic by just doing to usual configure/make/make install 
without caring about the existing ALSA driver. This resulted in the 
following error message when trying to load the snd_hdsp module aftrwards:

FATAL: Error inserting snd_hdsp 
(/lib/modules/2.6.24-1-686/kernel/sound/pci/rme9652/snd-hdsp.ko): 
Unknown symbol in module, or unknown parameter (see dmesg)
FATAL: Error running install command for snd_hdsp

And here is the output of dmesg:

snd_hwdep: disagrees about version of symbol snd_info_register
snd_hwdep: Unknown symbol snd_info_register
snd_hwdep: disagrees about version of symbol snd_info_create_module_entry
snd_hwdep: Unknown symbol snd_info_create_module_entry
snd_hwdep: disagrees about version of symbol snd_info_free_entry
snd_hwdep: Unknown symbol snd_info_free_entry
snd_hwdep: disagrees about version of symbol snd_unregister_oss_device
snd_hwdep: Unknown symbol snd_unregister_oss_device
snd_hwdep: Unknown symbol snd_verbose_printk
snd_hwdep: disagrees about version of symbol snd_register_oss_device
[... and so on for many more symbols...]

This output suggests to me that there were still remains of the old 
1.0.16 driver floating around, causing a versioning conflict.

What measures can be taken before compiling the new driver in order to 
avoid this situation? Or in other words: do I need to get rid of the 
ALSA driver that came with a generic kernel before compiling a new one, 
and if so, how do I do it?

best,
flo.H

P.S.:
I also found this:
http://alsa.opensrc.org/index.php/TroubleShooting#When_loading_modules.2C_it_complains_of_unknown_symbols.
but unfortunately cannot check 'lsmod', since I have purged the 
respective kernel :-(