[mdlug] Getting sound to work?

[David L Lambert]

Earlier this week I wiped Windows XP home from a Compaq desktop bearing 
a "Designed for Windows XP" sticker and installed Debian oldstable 
(squeeze).  (Actually, I used an even older netinst CD, installed ssh 
and NFS client, copied "/etc/apt/sources.list" from another system on 
the LAN and mapped "/var/cache/apt/archives" via NFS, then did "apt-get 
dist-upgrade" before installing anything else or adding users). It works 
a lot better, except that sound doesn't work any more.

"lspci" contains the following line:

00:14.5 Multimedia audio controller: ATI Technologies Inc IXP SB400 
AC'97 Audio Controller (rev 02)

"dmesg" suggests that the kernel saw the device, but is not loading a 
module for it:

$ dmesg | grep -i ac97
[    6.802355] ATI IXP AC97 controller 0000:00:14.5: PCI INT B -> GSI 17 
(level, low) -> IRQ 17
$ uname -r
2.6.32-5-686
$ lsmod | grep a97
$

Questions:

1. What module would provide an ALSA driver for this card? Or is it 
possible that I have the driver, but some daemon (pulseadio? udev? 
dbus?) that allows programs to see it is not properly installed or 
configured?
2. If I identify the driver, would it be a good idea to put "modprobe 
whatever_it_is" in "/etc/rc.local", or is ther another 
configuration-file I should use?

-- 
David Lee Lambert
Member ACM (david.lee.lambert at acm.org)
Ph# (616)676-7375  *  IM: davidleelambert (Yahoo!, Skype and Google Talk)
"Justicia, Tierra y Libertad"