Problems with ordering multiple sound cards with ALSA

[Callum Lerwick]

I'm having some obnoxious problems with using multiple ALSA devices, and
their ordering. I am trying to set up a music workstation. I have the
motherboard onboard sound (snd-intel8x0), a Behringer USB audio
interface (snd_usb_audio), and an M-Audio Oxygen 49 MIDI keyboard (also
snd_usb_audio).

What I want to do, is have the onboard sound be the ALSA default, so all
the various bleeps, blips, IM sounds, Doom 3, flash crap and so on go to
my cheapo cheezy thundery-mini-subwoofer disco-smile Altec Lansing PC
speakers. I want the USB device dedicated to jack, which goes to some
semi-decent subwooferless flat-ish response Sony speakers.

What happens is USB devices always get detected and loaded first.
Amusingly/annoyingly, if I only have the Oxygen MIDI keyboard plugged in
upon booting, it is assigned ALSA slot 0 even being a purely MIDI
device, and all apps try and use it for audio output and fail
spectacularly. The onboard sound gets loaded last and ends up slot 1 or
2 if I have the USB audio interface plugged in too.

Now, the latest system-config-soundcard seems to have grown the ability
to handle multiple soundcards at some point, and allow me to quickly and
easily fix the ordering. Its exactly what I need. Except... the changes
don't seem to be permanent. It reverts on reboot. It doesn't modify
modprobe.conf like it/kudzu used to do. I can't find any sign of it
saving any configuration anywhere. What's up with that? Is this supposed
to work? Am I missing something? This *is* FC6, not devel I'm using.

Oh well, I guess I get to hand-modify modprobe.conf by hand for now,
based on what's still in some of my older systems...

alias snd-card-0 snd-intel8x0
options snd-card-0 index=0
options snd-intel8x0 index=0
remove snd-intel8x0 { /usr/sbin/alsactl store 0 >/dev/null 2>&1
|| : ; }; /sbin/modprobe -r --ignore-remove snd-intel8x0

etc...
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