Udev sucks.

root@techno:~# ls /dev/audio*
ls: /dev/audio*: No such file or directory
root@techno:~# cd /dev
root@techno:~# ./MAKEDEV audio
root@techno:~# echo $?
0
root@techno:~# ls audio*
ls: audio*: No such file or directory

Goddamn piece of sh*t.

root@techno:~# apt-get --purge remove udev; reboot

There. That did it.

techno is my brother's computer. He's running GNU/Linux on it because the Windows 2000 he's running has already completely fallen over twice in the year he's had it; the only way to fix that those two times was to boot from the install CD and run recovery there. Trying to boot from the hard disk would give a nice BSOD every time. He's happy with Linux (it does most of what he needs, only some software packages he's learning at school aren't there, but he usually doesn't need that anyway); but if the sound doesn't work, he can't play any music, and that's not an option. I've had to fix his system's audio many times already, and it didn't work again, today. Now I don't mind having to go and fix his machine, but if it's the same thing every time...

At least DevFS would let me run MAKEDEV without complaining and without requiring me to jump through hoops. I'd need to do that again and again at every boot, sure, but that's no black magic...