[Glastonbury] ALSA issues

[nick irwin]

Ok, I know I keep posting with my own personal problems, but I am gonna do it 
again, as none of the info on the web nor support pages can ever help me.

As a few on the mailing list may be aware I recently upgraded, and now have a 
top of the line (nearly) PC. The problem is, Windows couldn't handle the 
amount of hardware that changed, so after tossing a coin as to whether or not  
to bother re-installing it, I did and it killed my Linux - 
Aaaaarrrggghhhh!!!!

Anyway long story short, re-installed linux, no sound and no proper display 
drivers, I think I can sort out the display problem, but my big niggle is the 
sound.
Now here's the confusing part, I can get the sound working, but every time I 
restart, I have to start from scratch and get it working again.
I have traced the problem, and the problem is that at boot, when ALSA is 
loaded, it says "ALSA version xxxx already running", and when I check the 
services in Mandrake Control Center, ALSA is stopped, so if I start it, fine, 
I can get sound for MP3's (not system notifications such as logging in, but 
I'm sure I could sort that out in time). Thing is I can't get it to start 
ALSA at boot.

The most helpful and relevent article I found on this problem states:

"I also managed to get ALSA working -- er, from the console. During an earlier 
attempt I had it working from KDE but not the console :-) but the settings 
wouldn't stick, and every time I rebooted I started from scratch again. I 
finally figured out the correct [undocumented] procedure by back-tracing 
through a 20-odd thread on the Gentoo-Users mailing list. One of those things 
where everyone had it about 75% right; the last 25% was a mish-mash of wrong 
guesses. Turns out you can't start ALSA from rc-update. Nor can you load any 
sound modules until the init phase is complete. Loading any modules causes 
ALSA to think its already been started, when it hasn't. So it says, "Sorry, 
I'm already running" and quits"

Now from this description I am sure that my system is loading ALSA before the 
init phase is complete, but I'm unable to figure out how I change when it 
loads so that I can delay it until after the init phase.

Anyone got any suggestions?

Appreciate it.

-- 
Nick Irwin
E-Mail: nirwin at pulbah.plus.com