This problem returned, for me also.
Storry, does it work as root? mine does.
I know this isn't good practice, but just curious.
I deleted my .vdrift dir and sound returned, but i must reboot before restarting the game.
Storry, The above solution was just a command line input, and it didn't help me.
storry, what version of OpenAL are you using? Do you have FreeALUT installed? The autopackage version was created using a new version of OpenAL and it requires FreeALUT. So even if you have OpenAL sound will probably not work unless it's the right version and FreeALUT is also present.
It is not too hard to grab the source package and compile it yourself, use the "old_openal=1" option to scons when you compile. Read the installation instructions that come with the source and let us know if you have any problems/questions.
A file not found error message likely is a permissions problem. Please check the permissions for the directory that the wav files are in.
Linux can do strange things when the file and directory permissions are restrictive. Symptoms range from applications hanging then disappearing to false file not found error messages.
Yeah, that could be the problem, also OpenAL sometimes reports that it can't find the file even when the file is there and has the correct permissions. At least the version of it that I was running before had this problem...I haven't had it in a while.