[Pkg-alsa-devel] Bug#439870: aplay fails to load my driver module snd-sb16

[David Lawyer]

Package:alsa-utils
Version: 1.0.14-1

When I type aplay ..., there is no sound and the sound modules fail to
load.  I used strace to find out why.  aplay tries to open
/dev/snd/controlC0 and then tries /dev/aloadC0.  Both fail to open
since they don't exist.  After trying in vain C0, C1, C2, ... aplay
gives up and exits with an error message "cannot find card ' '".

Well, I do have both devices it tried to open but they are both in the
/dev/.static/dev/ directory.  So why is it looking in the wrong place
for them?  My card is not plug-and-play and is thus not detected at
boottime so nothing for it is put into the /dev directory.  But of
course it's driver mod. snd-sb16 can find the card and use it.  So if
I give the command "modprobe snd-sb16" sound works, although it still
has a bug or two as I reported in another bug report.  I would rather
not load the sound modules until I'm ready to start sound and don't
want to auto-load them at boot time.  I've only got 32 MB of memory
and aplay is supposed to load the modules by loading snd-sb16 which
then loads a lot more sound moudules per the dependency tree.

			David Lawyer