this evening (more techie bullshit)

[kragen@pobox.com (Kragen Sitaker)]

Well, it turns out the reason ALSA modules wouldn't work is that I built
them before downloading the 2.2.12 kernel, so they were theoretically
set up for 2.0.36.  Kinda funny, considering that ALSA 0.4.* doesn't
work with Linux kernels 2.0.*.

So now I have rebuilt the modules and modprobed them so the kernel loads
them; now I need to figure out why they report that I don't have any
sound cards.  (The card shows up in /proc/pci, but not in
/proc/asound/whatever.)

On the Sun-boot-problem side: it looks like, with 2.0.36, the sun's
bootparam request to the subnet broadcast address gets *answered*:
23:26:16.974934 gentle.kragenshouse.nfs > thor.kragenshouse.1077: reply ok 620 read [|nfs]
23:26:34.004934 rarp who-is 8:0:20:0:40:73 tell 8:0:20:0:40:73
23:26:34.004934 rarp reply 8:0:20:0:40:73 at thor.kragenshouse
23:26:34.294934 arp who-has thor.kragenshouse tell thor.kragenshouse
23:26:34.304934 thor.kragenshouse.1023 > 10.255.255.255.sunrpc: udp 96
23:26:34.334934 gentle.kragenshouse.sunrpc > thor.kragenshouse.1023: udp 88
23:26:34.814934 arp who-has gentle.kragenshouse tell thor.kragenshouse
23:26:34.814934 arp reply gentle.kragenshouse is-at 0:20:af:19:8b:bb
23:26:34.814934 thor.kragenshouse.1023 > gentle.kragenshouse.825: udp 92
23:26:34.824934 gentle.kragenshouse.825 > thor.kragenshouse.1023: udp 92
23:26:34.824934 thor.kragenshouse.1023 > gentle.kragenshouse.sunrpc: udp 76

(That's the last packet of the kernel load, followed by rarp, arp, and
bootparam requests.)

So I guess I need to update my portmapper and/or rpc.bootparamd so they
respond to broadcast requests -- just as Paul suggested.

Marilyn and I watched "The Dream Life of Angels", which was pretty good,
but quite sad.

Before that, we went to visit our friends the Geigers.   We lay in
the Geigers' hammock together, overstressing the thick steel hook
holding one end of the hammock and straightening it, dumping us both on
the ground.  Ouch.