tim hall writes: I am still not there yet, but I keep finding new reasons why. update-modules does nothing but exercise my fingers and return a new shell prompt without so much as a single squawk about anything. Unfortunately, there is no alsa directory in /lib/modules/2.6.5 although one can sure see all the modules in their proper directory. The whole problem stems from the fact that the module-management environment was and still probably is broken. I installed Debian Linux in January of 2002 and things were different then. Last night, I discovered that depmod which gets its replacement if you install module-init-tools, was a symlink to the old depmod from then. Also, modprobe is another symlink between /sbin/modprobe and something called insmod which documentation says is for inserting modules in to a running kernel. Two years ago, you just inserted modules but never removed them. The code to remove them was there, but experimental. I took the liberty of re-doing both those links so they point to the new versions of depmod and modprobe. I then built a new 2.6.5 kernel, made the modules and installed them. There was no complaining from the process at all. I then did another update-modules and, as is the hallmark of this quest, absolutely nothing new happened. References to /dev/[anything audio] produce "no such device" errors. Another blast from the past that has been haunting me all this time was that I had unsuccessfully tried to get alsa going in 2002 when it was a separate application. It was something like /etc/init.d/alsa and was started and stopped at boot and shutdown by a script in /etc/rc2.d and another in /etc/rc1.d called S20alsa. Those were still trying to work. They are gone now. At this time, that is where I stand. I did try another MAKEDEV.snd script run from the scripts directory in the 2.6.5 source, but that just repeated the same futile action as before. The audio devices all exist, but return "no such device" errors when used. I think it is really funny that usually, it is the hardware end of the setup that is problematic, but log messages show PNP finding the right card and the correct driver being registered. The only thing I see on boot that even looks pathological is a depmod message complaining about something called AF_PACKET not being found. I don't think that relates to sound, so one thing at a time for now.:-) What else could it be? I've sure learned a lot about how modules do or don't get installed, but I bet there is something really stupid behind this whole standoff. I'd say someone stupid, but that's getting close to home. In my straw-grasping mode, I wonder if I should rebuild module-init-tools after discovering the depmod and modprobe links weren't right, but somehow, that doesn't sound really necessary. Any more ideas besides starting from scratch? Many thanks. Martin McCormick