After building alsa-utils and alsa-driver, I ran alsaconf to configure my sound card and the information was stored in /etc/modprobe.conf: # # /etc/modprobe.conf: modprobe(8) configuration # # --- BEGIN: Generated by ALSACONF, do not edit. --- # --- ALSACONF version 1.0.14rc2 --- alias snd-card-0 snd-via82xx alias sound-slot-0 snd-via82xx # --- END: Generated by ALSACONF, do not edit. --- lsmod shows: Module Size Used by ac97_bus 2048 0 snd_page_alloc 7816 0 via_rhine 19208 0 I am assuming that the information in modprobe.conf is not loaded during startup. Please tell me how to load this file during startup. I've tried "modprobe -C /etc/modprobe.conf" but that doesn't seem to do anything.