ALSA on vmware: Doesn't recognize sb16?

Message

golemB · Post by **golemB** » Fri May 02, 2003 7:57 am

Hey y'all, I've got a problem:

I've got a reasonable (though minimal) Gentoo system up and running on vmware on my laptop. One problem, though, is that I've not been able to get sound working.

At first, I thought (from some of the VMWare docs) that it emulates a plain, old, original SoundBlaster. So I followed the Gentoo ALSA guide and tried multiple times to get snd-sb8 to work. No dice, modprobe tried to load the module but the hardware didn't match or something (supposedly IRQs). I gave it a rest for a while and chugged on without sound.

Then I reread the builtin help on VMWare Workstation, which now (at least the page I'm on!) claims it emulates an SB16 (PCM and sound-in only), and it provides the numbers for IRQ, DMA, etc. I dutifully re-configured and recompiled my kernel (now happily on gentoo-sources-2.4.20r2, woohoo!) in accordance with the Gentoo ALSA guide. That worked fine, and I emerged alsa-driver without errors. Then modprobe said:

Can't locate module snd-sb16

I did a ``find / -name "snd-sb16.o"'' and found it at /lib/modules/2.4.20-gentoo-r2/kernel/sound/isa/sb/snd-sb16.0, so it DOES exist and everything. I am pretty sure I did the whole make dep && make clean bzImage modules modules_install dance, including copying the new bzImage to /boot and restarting. But unlike the last time with sb8, modprobe can't even find the poor module! Of course, the answer was that when I copied the new bzImage to /boot, I hadn't mounted my /boot partition (non-auto in my fstab as recommended, doh!). So I tried that. Now I get the same old dance (insmod: init_module: no such device).

I promise, I searched through the forums before posting... Anybody got ideas? If so, please post your thoughts - they're much appreciated!

(P.S. - I do realize that ALSA may be overkill over OSS when we're talking about an emulated soundcard without all the fancy hardware mixing, but I'd like to get this working cleanly for experience, not to mention that the kernel's moving away from OSS rapidly...)

H0bb3z · Post by **H0bb3z** » Mon Jun 02, 2003 7:55 pm

Are you running VMware 3 or 4? Version 4 seems to emulate SB PCI Audio, or snd-ens1371.

I'm having a bit of a problem getting sound to the Gentoo-in-vmware4 machine using the ens-1371 driver -- it isn't recognizing the driver. I may try the emu10k1 driver, but I haven't had any luck yet...

golemB · Post by **golemB** » Tue Jun 03, 2003 10:42 am

I've been using VMware 3.x. Some places in the documentation, it claims to emulate "Soundblaster" (seemingly implying sb8) whereas sometimes it claims SB 16. Neither works for me in Linux.

I don't know much about VMware 4.x.

H0bb3z · Post by **H0bb3z** » Tue Jun 03, 2003 4:31 pm

Can you glean any useful information from this?

Code: Select all

cat /proc/interrupts

You may also check out this thread where the user passed specific parameters to the driver to load it properly:

http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php? ... wares+sb16

Of course, this all pertains to VMWare 3, I'm still getting no love with the sound in VMWare 4...

golemB · Post by **golemB** » Tue Jun 03, 2003 5:12 pm

H0bb3z wrote:Can you glean any useful information from this?
Code: Select all
cat /proc/interrupts

I'm not sure - it doesn't say anything about a soundcard. Neither does lspci or catting /proc/pci. Maybe VMware is torturing me?

I suppose I could try the OSS route, but if VMware isn't providing a detectable soundcard, would it be worth the effort?

H0bb3z · Post by **H0bb3z** » Tue Jun 03, 2003 5:29 pm

I doubt it -- if vmware isn't giving you sound, you're not going to get sound. You could check the VMware support site for something related:

http://www.vmware.com/support/linux/tro ... linux.html

I haven't found what I'm looking for with respect to VMWare 4, but maybe there's something there for VMware 3 that I overlooked...

RagManX · Post by **RagManX** » Wed Jun 04, 2003 12:18 pm

I never got sound working right under VMWare 3.x with Gentoo. Funny thing is, when I used Gnome as my window manager, I got sound, but with any other window manager or using aplay/amixer, I never could get sound working. Supposedly, sb16 will work, and on my RedHat installs under VMWare 3.x, that is the module listed via lsmod. But that was as close as I could get it to work. I tried passing various IRQ/DMA settings at boot, compiling drivers into the kernel or as modules, and so on. There have been a number of posts on the forum about this. Someone, somewhere, has info on getting an OSS based VMWare 3.x session working with sound, but I don't know of anyone getting it working with ALSA (at least under a 2.4.xx kernel - maybe the 2.5.xx would work?).

Under VMWare 4.x, sound works just fine with the ens-1371 driver. Playback through XMMS while my VMWare session is in the background is smooth, with no hiccups. But I couldn't get 3.x working right.

RagManX