If you are following these lines, you already know that I use gentoo as my favorite Linux distro. Last week I wanted to find out why my master volume was not controlling the sound output. Instead the headphone volume control was. :P

So I followed some advices that I found on the Gentoo forums. But suddenly I screwed up all my sound system. The dmesg is complaining about Unknow symbols, recompiling the kernel and the alsa-driver package didn't solve the problem, etc.. etc... (So if something is working, don't touch it. But gentoo is all about touching right? )

Anyway I looked a bit my kernel environment and I realized that actually there was a directory called alsa-driver under /usr/lib/$(uname -r)/ also I had drivers under /usr/lib/$(uname -r)/kernel/sound

I think I never went and "disabled" sound modules in my kernel config! DUH! :P In Gentoo there is an alsa-drivers package that you compile if you want latest alsa. So I guess the two drivers didn't like each other and they were not cooperating.

While writing these lines, I was recompiling my kernel without alsa support and I will also try reemerging the alsa-driver package.  Let's see if my post will be full of foul mouth or smileys...

For the record: Here is Alsa howto on gentoo wiki.