/etc/asound.state Probably the easiest way to store mixer levels is to set and retrieve them using a bootscript. It is possible to do this with a post-install line in /etc/modules.conf but this is left as an exercise for those readers who wish to do this. The ALSA Driver package installs a script as /etc/rc.d/init.d/alsasound. While it is possible to use this script, it contains a lot of extraneous detail which isn't needed on an LFS system and so we install the init script /etc/rc.d/init.d/alsa included in the package. make install-alsa Note that all channels of your soundcard are muted by default. You can use the alsamixer program from ALSA Utilities (or any other OSS mixer) to change this. Also, the first time the above script is run, it will complain that there is no state in /etc/asound.state. You can prevent this by running the following commands after installing ALSA Utilities: touch /etc/asound.state && alsactl store A final note is that the lines loading sfxload are commented out. They are there as an example of other things you may wish to do in the startup script. sfxload is a separate package of interest to SoundBlaster AWE and Live! users. It is designed for loading "sound-fonts" (which are used for MIDI output). You may wish to delete these lines and add your own or, if you have the relevant soundcard, install sfxload and uncomment them.