Debian has a few config tools you can use, if you know the name of the package usually you can run debconf-(name of package) to configure it. there is also a program you can install via apt-get called configure-debian (its ncurses based) that allows you to configure pretty much everything. some of your config can also be done in kcontrol assuming your running kde.
I have had issues with sound and here are some quick pointers you may try out to help.
take a small file, text or whatever and try cat'ing it into /dev/dsp
cat smallfile.txt > /dev/dsp
do you get sound? try this as a user and as root, if you get something as root and not as a user then its a perms problem.
run
ls -l /dev/ds*
you may find something like this.
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 9 May 16 19:30 /dev/dsp -> /dev/dsp0
crw-rw-rw- 1 root audio 14, 3 May 16 19:30 /dev/dsp0
crw-rw-rw- 1 root audio 14, 19 May 16 19:30 /dev/dsp1
crw-rw-rw- 1 root audio 14, 35 May 16 19:30 /dev/dsp2
crw-rw-rw- 1 root audio 14, 51 May 16 19:30 /dev/dsp3
this would indicate proper permissions, you might however find something more like this
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 9 May 16 19:30 /dev/dsp -> /dev/dsp0
crw-rw---- 1 root audio 14, 3 May 16 19:30 /dev/dsp0
crw-rw---- 1 root audio 14, 19 May 16 19:30 /dev/dsp1
crw-rw---- 1 root audio 14, 35 May 16 19:30 /dev/dsp2
crw-rw---- 1 root audio 14, 51 May 16 19:30 /dev/dsp3
which would mean sound only works for user root and user audio and your probably not logging in as either of them.
chmod 666 /dev/ds* should solve your problem.
also try sndconfig to get audio working and last but not least if none of this helps run lsmod to make sure your even loading the modules for audio.
HTH
Tnt
http://www.pervasivenetwerks.com