Here's the story. I have Gentoo and Mandrake. I leave my computer on 24/7.
A few days ago, I came home from work and eth0 was down. I thought it
might be a problem with Gentoo, so I booted into Mandrake. Same deal. So I
booted back into Gentoo, and suddenly Gentoo boot says "snd-card-0 not
found", and there's no sound. I boot back into Mandrake, and Mandrake has
sound. Taking one problem at a time, I put a spare ethernet card in, and
try eth1 in Mandrake, and then Gentoo, and that doesn't work either. I try
a Gentoo Live-CD, and that doesn't accept either ethernet card. Thinking
it might be a problem with the whole motherboard or something (I'm not too
hardware savvy), I try a different computer. I used it last month, so I
know its ethernet card works. Same deal. So I call my ISP and they say it
might be a problem with the modem/splitter, so I get a new set. Still no
connection in Gentoo. So I use eth1 (which I'm assuming means ethernet
card #2), and that's a no-go in Gentoo (which still has no sound), but
Gentoo LIVE-cd, and Mandrake can now connect through the new ethernet card
I installed (and both claim it's called eth0, which pretty much ruins my
idea of hardware/device handling in Linux, which dictates it should be
called eth1). Still no sound/connection in Gentoo with either card.
Tomorrow I'm going to see if Mandrake can connect through eth0 (first
ethernet card), and if a reinstall of ALSA in Gentoo will help get sound
back. Now I just want to whine and ask if anyone has any idea how to get
Gentoo to connect and what could have caused this. If it was the modem,
why won't Gentoo connect now? If it was the ethernet card or modem, why
did sound break in Gentoo? If it was the motherboard (or whatever handles
cards), why didn't sound break in Mandrake? No matter how I turn it in my
head, I can't get this to make sense. Any wise guru care to take a shot at
this?