Null/dummy Sound card?

[Antimatter]

I am deaf, thus I have no need for any types of sound card on my computer, thus I've disabled the sound on my motherboard via the BIOS.

However sadly there are still a few apps that will crash or flat out not work if there is no sound card or device driver that has to do with sound cards.

So I'm wondering how I can setup some sort of dummy/null device that will work with Ekiga, and VMware?

I have a few windows only application/games that will crash with an exception if there is no sound card present, and since there is no way to force vmware to fake it, I need to have an actual "fake" sound card device present on the system.

I've searched high and low and every single post has to do with people complaining about the lack of sound, or old drivers for windows 95 era computers to simulate an null/fake sound card.

Thanks!

[mikegpitt]

I never tried this myself, but have you ever configured CONFIG_SND_DUMMY=y into your kernel? At face value it looks like exactly what you need.

[DooBeDooBeDo]

ALSA can create a dummy device. I've not tried it but in menuconfig there is one available:

Code: Select all

Symbol: SND_DUMMY [=n]
  │ Prompt: Dummy (/dev/null) soundcard 
  │   Defined at sound/drivers/Kconfig:64
  │   Depends on: SOUND && !M68K && SND && SND_DRIVERS  
  │   Location:
  │     -> Device Drivers
  │       -> Sound card support (SOUND [=m])
  │         -> Advanced Linux Sound Architecture (SND [=m]) 
  │           -> Generic sound devices (SND_DRIVERS [=y])
  │   Selects: SND_PCM

Certainly worth a look...

[cyrillic]

I have no need for any types of sound card on my computer, thus I've disabled the sound on my motherboard via the BIOS.

What you may want to try instead is to enable the onboard soundcard, but don't attach any speakers to it.
Doing that should make all your software happy.

[Antimatter]

ALSA can create a dummy device. I've not tried it but in menuconfig there is one available:

Code: Select all

Symbol: SND_DUMMY [=n]
  │ Prompt: Dummy (/dev/null) soundcard 
  │   Defined at sound/drivers/Kconfig:64
  │   Depends on: SOUND && !M68K && SND && SND_DRIVERS  
  │   Location:
  │     -> Device Drivers
  │       -> Sound card support (SOUND [=m])
  │         -> Advanced Linux Sound Architecture (SND [=m]) 
  │           -> Generic sound devices (SND_DRIVERS [=y])
  │   Selects: SND_PCM

Certainly worth a look...

Yeah i tried that, no such luck so i gave up and just enabled my damned sound card on the mobo and setup alsa and it seems like vmware and several other programs are now happy about it *sigh*