sound doesn't work until I login

[Ralf Mardorf]

On Thu, 08 Sep 2016 16:39:13 +1000, Karl Auer wrote:
>Listen carefully: There is no user session :-)

I read carefully, you only mentioned that you aren't using a GUI.

What is speaking against at least an automatic login?

I've never done it myself, but perhaps some of the hits are useful:

https://duckduckgo.com/html?q=automatic+login+linux+no+gui&t=gnu

http://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/questions/3873/auto-login-with-gui-disabled-in-raspbian
http://superuser.com/questions/407914/automatic-root-login-in-debian-6-0-without-gui-xserver
http://littlesvr.ca/linux-stuff/articles/autologinconsole/autologinconsole.php

If you don't run a session, then you can't expect that e.g. session
related directories are working, resp. tools that require a started
session for what reason ever do their job, since actually initialisation
isn't necessarily finished with startup, it often is finished not until
then a session started.

Regards,
Ralf