Hi guys!

I have been trying to get sound working on my Dell Inspiron 8000 lapop.

Under Knoppix 3.6, it works fine with kernel 2.4, but under kernel 2.6 it
crashes with a kernel "oops".

Under Knoppix 3.8, it also crashes, but i don't have the option to use
a 2.4 kernel

The laptop boots fine, but I do not get the voice "initiating starting sequence"
with the 2.6-based Knopix. The process generating the audio hangs, and
any attempts to use audio afterwards crash, and cannot be kill -9'ed.

Has anyone got the maestro3 working in this configuration before?
How can I fix it so that sound works with Knoppix 3.8 and beyond?

The problem appears the begin during boot, where the following
messages are output:

<lots of stuff deleted>
apm: BIOS version 1.2 Flags 0x03 (Driver version 1.16ac)
apm: overridden by ACPI.
[drm] Initialized drm 1.0.0 20040925
ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKA] enabled at IRQ 11
ACPI: PCI interrupt 0000:01:00.0[A] -> GSI 11 (level, low) -> IRQ 11
[drm] Initialized r128 2.5.0 20030725 on minor 0: ATI Technologies Inc Rage Mobility M4 AGP
agpgart: Found an AGP 2.0 compliant device at 0000:00:00.0.
agpgart: Putting AGP V2 device at 0000:00:00.0 into 1x mode
agpgart: Putting AGP V2 device at 0000:01:00.0 into 1x mode
ACPI: PCI interrupt 0000:02:06.0[A] -> GSI 11 (level, low) -> IRQ 11
Unable to handle kernel NULL pointer dereference at virtual address 00000138
printing eip:
c02c8bed
*pde = 00000000
Oops: 0002 [#1]
PREEMPT SMP
Modules linked in: r128 drm via_agp sworks_agp sis_agp nvidia_agp intel_mch_agp intel_agp efficeon_agp ati_agp amd64_agp amd_k7_agp ali_agp autofs4 ext3 jbd agpgart maestro3 soundcore ac97_codec 3c59x mii hw_random parport_pc parport 8250 serial_core usbhid uhci_hcd af_packet orinoco_cs orinoco hermes pcmcia yenta_socket rsrc_nonstatic pcmcia_core video thermal processor fan container button battery ac rtc unionfs cloop sbp2 ohci1394 ieee1394 usb_storage ub ohci_hcd ehci_hcd usbcore
CPU: 0
EIP: 0060:[<c02c8bed>] Not tainted VLI
EFLAGS: 00010046 (2.6.11)
EIP is at _spin_lock_irqsave+0x15/0x64
eax: 00000000 ebx: 00000138 ecx: 00000003 edx: 00000202
esi: de07e000 edi: 00000003 ebp: de1006a0 esp: de07fec8
ds: 007b es: 007b ss: 0068
Process ogg123 (pid: 2872, threadinfo=de07e000 task=df522550)
Stack: 00000138 de6bf618 e0d62cec dde2e660 de07e000 ff005428 dac0eb70 e0d528a0
00000003 00000000 e0d67280 e0d5156b dac0eb70 de1006a0 de981260 00000001
00000000 dac0eb70 c015a78d dac0eb70 de1006a0 00000003 de1006a0 dac0eb70
Call Trace:
[<e0d62cec>] m3_open+0xf4/0x214 [maestro3]
[<e0d5156b>] soundcore_open+0x12b/0x2b0 [soundcore]
[<c015a78d>] chrdev_open+0xd9/0x17c
[<c01521b8>] dentry_open+0x13c/0x220
[<c0152076>] filp_open+0x46/0x4c
[<c01522f1>] get_unused_fd+0x55/0xac
[<c01523f6>] sys_open+0x32/0x84
[<c010342b>] syscall_call+0x7/0xb
Code: 8a 03 84 c0 7f e9 8b 43 04 85 c0 75 f1 eb e0 e8 fa f2 ff ff eb c5 56 53 89 c3 b8 00 e0 ff ff 21 e0 ff 40 14 89 c6 9c 5a fa 31 c0 <86> 03 84 c0 7e 05 5b 89 d0 5e c3 52 9d 8b 46 08 ff 4e 14 a8 08
<6>note: ogg123[2872] exited with preempt_count 1
NET: Registered protocol family 10
Disabled Privacy Extensions on device c0368c60(lo)
IPv6 over IPv4 tunneling driver

Thanks for any ideas!
--
Adrian Wrigley, Cambridge, UK.