I've recompiled my kernel in order to get sound working. Now when I reboot I can see messages about my sound card, so I went back to the documentation to see how to test the sound.
"The Linux Sound HOWTO; Installation (p15 of 26)", section 4.3 states that there should be a "/dev/sndstat" file. There isn't one. It says it can be created by using the short script at the "end of the file Readme.linux in the directory /usr/src/linux/drivers/sound". There is no such directory. However, I surmised that the /usr/src/kernel-source-2.2.1/drivers/sound would be equivalent. Nonetheless, there is no "Readme.linux" in this directory, and the two READMEs that are there don't have such a script (at least not that I can recognize). I installed saytime as a test program; it appears to run, but I hear nothing. I still don't quite get how modules work, so I'm sure I've just gotten something screwed up, and in conjunction with faulty documentation (the aforementioned Sound HOWTO), I'm at a loss. I've clued in enough to the various posts that I know there's such commands as lsmod, insmod, rmmod, and modprobe, and I've tinkered around with them, but haven't had much luck. The lsmod shows: vmnet, vmmon, binfmt-aout, vfat, and fat. I've tried to "insmod sb" (guessing that "sb" means "SoundBlaster") and "insmod sound", but there's "no module found by that name". I'll continue trying to read what I can about modules in general and sound in particular, but I'd really appreciate it if anyone could give me any pointers. (To be honest, I tend to distrust the documentation since so much of what I've read over the past year isn't quite right in one way or another.)
