> Please provide output of:

>    apt-cache policy acp alsa-oss alsa-base alsa-utils libesd-alsa0
aufs-modules-2.6.28-grml linux-image-2.6.28-grml

Ahh, alsa-oss is holding back at an earlier version. That might be the reason
that the new testing alsa environment does not work (details follows). The issue
has come to a point that I can't afford to go any further, so I'll close the bug
and revert to my last-good grml. 

Thanks again for prompt responds



Details:

alsa-oss:
  Installed: 1.0.15-1
  Candidate: 1.0.15-1
  Version table:
     1.0.17-1 0
         50 http://gulus.usherbrooke.ca unstable/main Packages
 *** 1.0.15-1 0
        300 http://gulus.usherbrooke.ca lenny/main Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

> Looks ok. If you execute 'soundtest' what happens then?

No sound, even the MPlayer plays the /usr/share/grml/effect.ogg fine. 

When I tried "play" that comes with 
sox - Swiss army knife of sound processing

I get:

$ play test.wav
play soxio: Can't open output file `/dev/dsp': Permission denied

$ ls /dev/dsp
ls: cannot access /dev/dsp: No such file or directory