How can I ensure the `snd-hda-intel` module is loaded on startup?

Add snd-hda-intel to the end of the file /etc/modules. This will make the snd-hda-intel module load up automatically at boot time.

You can use: sudo sh -c 'echo "snd-hda-intel" >> /etc/modules' to do this.

In /etc/modules you can put every module (one per line) for those you need to load at boot time.

Running this command will append the module to the file:

echo "snd-hda-intel" | sudo tee -a /etc/modules

After attempting an "oss4" audio install, I lost audio, and reverting my mistake, did not recover the audio.

Needed to "manually": modprobe snd-hda-intel every boot....

Until I found that the driver had been put in a blacklist.... on the oss4 attempt.

grep snd-hda-intel /etc/modprobe.d/*

/etc/modprobe.d/oss4-base_noALSA.conf:blacklist snd-hda-intel

moved the "oss4-base_noALSA.conf" away from the "/etc/modprobe.d"

sudo mv /etc/modprobe.d/oss4-base_noALSA.conf /root

and now, do not need to manually "modprobe snd-hda-intel" to get audio after every boot....

Hope it helps...