Reinstall Sound Driver For Dell 390n Only

When you run up2date to update Redhat Linux for the Dell 390n machine, this willcause the "audio" to stop working. Here is the procedure to recover it.

Check your NC machine in /shared/sos. If there are no snd-hda-intel-1.0.6p-9 and WS390-020008.BIN files, please visit here to download snd-hda-intel-1.0.6p-9.tar.gz and WS390-020008.BIN
snd-hda-intel-1.0.6p-9 is the sound card driver, and WS390-020008.BIN is new BIOS version. Both are provided by DELL (you can go to Dell to download them too).
Run this command against the two files listed.
diff /etc/modprobe.conf~ /etc/modprobe.conf
If there is modprobe.conf~ then system will show you output like this:

4c4
< alias snd-card-0 snd-azx
---
> alias snd-card-0 snd-hda-intel
6,7c6,7
< install snd-azx /sbin/modprobe --ignore-install snd-azx && /usr/sbin/alsactl restore >/dev/null 2>&1 || :
< remove snd-azx { /usr/sbin/alsactl store >/dev/null 2>&1 || : ; }; /sbin/modprobe -r --ignore-remove snd-azx
---
> install snd-hda-intel /sbin/modprobe --ignore-install snd-hda-intel && /usr/sbin/alsactl restore >/dev/null 2>&1 || :
> remove snd-hda-intel { /usr/sbin/alsactl store >/dev/null 2>&1 || : ; }; /sbin/modprobe -r --ignore-remove snd-hda-intel
The major difference is snd-azx and snd-hda-intel
If your computer works with audio, then when you execute the command
"lsmod | grep snd"
it should show you something similiar to below:

snd_hda_codec 60804 1 snd_hda_intel
If your computer audio system does not work, you may need to reinstall the sound card driver, the current modules need to be loaded into the Linux kernel The kernel module is "snd-hda-intel". However, in order to install the driver it needs "snd-azx" for installation. So, you may simply copy /etc/modprobe.conf~ to /etc/modprobe.conf or visit here to download one and save it to be /etc/modprobe.conf ( see the reinstall step )

Start to reinstall sound card driver

Query the installed modules in question which need to be removed before the new install. Run the following command:
sudo rpm -qa | grep dkms
Remove the modules from kernel which were listed from the above command
sudo rpm -e snd-hda-intel-version
sudo rpm -e dkms-version
Copy /etc/modprobe.conf~ to /etc/modprobe.conf
cp /etc/modprobe.conf~ /etc/modprobe.conf
Update the BIOS, if the BIOS has not been updated (BIOS should be 2.0.8 or greater). To determine what BIOS version you have or to do the actual update, run
"sudo WS390-020008.BIN"
This will ask if you want to replace a version with version 2.0.8. At this point you can determine what version you are running and choose to either quit or to proceed. If you proceed it will require the system to be rebooted to load the new BIOS and load snd-azx modules into kernel.
After system reboots, make sure the snd-azx module is loaded by using "/sbin/lsmod"
cd /shared/sos/snd-hda-intel-1.0.6p-9
sudo rpm -Uvh dkms-2.0.5-1.noarch.rpm
sudo rpm -Uvh snd-hda-intel-1.0.6p-9dkms.noarch.rpm
Make sure there is no any error comes up, then reboot. Or, you might need to recheck the procedures and redo it again.
After the reboot, verify that the sound works.
An easy way to determine this is through the tool bar. Go to Applications, System Settings, Sound Card Detection.

Note : Until Redhat incorporates the sound patch into future kernels, everytime a new kernel is installed, this process will need to be repeated.