VMware Communities: Message List - Make ALSA sound work in VMWare

Re: Make ALSA sound work in VMWare

larryleffa — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 08:22:49 GMT

Inspired by this thread I tried the following:

start-vmware:
#! /bin/bash
LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib64/libaoss.so exec aoss /opt/vmware/workstation/bin/vmware "$@"

start-vmplayer:
#! /bin/bash
LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib64/libaoss.so exec aoss /opt/vmware/workstation/bin/vmplayer "$@"

Works for me like a charm. Tried with VMware-Workstation v6.5.3.185404 on a Gentoo-Linux X86_64 with alsa-oss.

-
Larry

Re: Make ALSA sound work in VMWare

bbhavsar — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 00:51:48 GMT

VMware Workstation 7.0 and VMware Player 3.0 now supports ALSA on Linux hosts http://communities.vmware.com/community/beta/workstation

Better late than never...

--Bankim.

Re: Make ALSA sound work in VMWare

xbalanque — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 17:13:28 GMT

while the patched vmsdsp driver doesn't work on the 64bits version, i'm still trying to make the old aoss hack to make vmware player (not the workstation, i'm assuming they are similar) to work with sound. I'm on a Ubuntu 7.10 64bits.

Unfortunately it's failing -- without giving much reason why.

By doing an "lsof" on the /usr/lib/vmware/bin/vmplayer process, i noticed it did link libaoss.so.

I tried using libaoss with mpg123 (configured to use oss) and it works.

Just for safety i also closed anything that would have any of the sound devices opened: even the volume control on the panel. Running "lsof" told me that there was nothing opening anything like "/dev/snd*".

Any ideas on what could i be doing wrong ?

many thanks!

ps.: btw, i remember this issue since at least 2005, when i had vmware workstation 5 ... it's amazing that vmware hasn't updated its sound driver yet!

Re: Make ALSA sound work in VMWare

xbalanque — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 17:14:44 GMT

(duplicate post removed)

Re: Make ALSA sound work in VMWare

dhurst — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 18:05:34 GMT

twc,
I'm working in OpenSuSE 10.3 with vmware workstation v6.02. I've run into the same compile time problem your listing and wondered if you found a way to fix it. Here is what I get on a 64bit machine:

/home/dphurst/vmwaredsp-1.4 # make
make -C src default
make[1]: Entering directory `/home/dphurst/bin/vmwaredsp-1.4/src'
cc -c -g -W -Wall -O2 -fPIC -o vmdsp.o vmdsp.c
cc -shared -Wl,-version-script=vmdsp.map -o libvmdsp.so vmdsp.o -lpthread -ldl -lc
/usr/lib64/gcc/x86_64-suse-linux/4.2.1/../../../../x86_64-suse-linux/bin/ld: libvmdsp.so: version node not found for symbol lseek64@GLIBC_2.2.5
/usr/lib64/gcc/x86_64-suse-linux/4.2.1/../../../../x86_64-suse-linux/bin/ld: failed to set dynamic section sizes: Bad value
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
make[1]: *** http://libvmdsp.so Error 1
rm vmdsp.o
make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/dphurst/bin/vmwaredsp-1.4/src'
make: *** default Error 2

Is there a trick to fix this? Obviously, I'm using the 64bit gcc to compile this.
Thanks,
Dow

Re: Make ALSA sound work in VMWare

Thomas_J — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 13:39:13 GMT

Hi Whoopie,

Whoopie wrote:Hi Thomas_J,

I tested vmwaredsp-1.4 with latest vmware player (Ubuntu Gutsy). I have two problems here.
1. When another application on the host uses the sound card, I get the debug message: "ALSA lib pcm_dmix.c:864:(snd_pcm_dmix_open) unable to open slave"

I am not sure. Could be that your device does not support automatic mixing, i.e. shared access to the hardware. You can check if you system supports it by trying yo play a sound file twice at the same time: aplay foo.wav&; aplay foo.wav&. If you can hear it twice everything is fine, well, I would probably have to look into it.

2. If vmware is the only application which wants to use the sound card, I see "ALSA lib pcm.c:7067:(snd_pcm_recover) underrun occured". The sound in the vmware guest is skewed and flannelly.

Yeah. I have seen this, too, but I haven't debugged it yet. If I find time on my next week off, I'll try to figure out what is wrong. Otherwise, if I do not find time, everybody is invited to have a look at the code. Thanks.

Cheers,
T.

Re: Make ALSA sound work in VMWare

Whoopie — Sat, 24 Nov 2007 00:29:10 GMT

Hi Thomas_J,

I tested vmwaredsp-1.4 with latest vmware player (Ubuntu Gutsy). I have two problems here.

1. When another application on the host uses the sound card, I get the debug message: "ALSA lib pcm_dmix.c:864:(snd_pcm_dmix_open) unable to open slave"
2. If vmware is the only application which wants to use the sound card, I see "ALSA lib pcm.c:7067:(snd_pcm_recover) underrun occured". The sound in the vmware guest is skewed and flannelly.

Do you have a guess why? Thanks for your help.

Best regards,

Whoopie

Re: Make ALSA sound work in VMWare

Thomas_J — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 21:40:41 GMT

Sorry for the late response.

It is probably due to the fact that I broke 64 bit support in the first release. Please download and compile again.

Cheers.

Re: Make ALSA sound work in VMWare

dreamcarrior — Sun, 02 Sep 2007 09:56:09 GMT

WinXP as guest OS. In Fedora 4, vmware 5.5.3 works great. In Fedora 6, vmware 6.0 works great but no sound. I tried the following
1. moving vmware-vmx to vmware-vmx.real and put LD_PRELOAD=libaoss.so.0.0.0 exec /usr/lib/vmware/bin/vmware-vmx.real "$@" to the original vmware-vmx
2. add export LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/libaoss.so.0.0.0:$LD_PRELOAD to wrapper-gtk24.sh right before the last line vm_run "$@"
3. in settings, I could either choose autodect sound or choose /dev/dsp, but neither works.

I don't know what else I should do to make the sound work, but the next thing will be compile the vmwaredsp. If anyone has any suggestion, please let me know. Thanks.

Re: Make ALSA sound work in VMWare

twc — Sat, 01 Sep 2007 01:09:58 GMT

I am running SUSE 10.2. I am desp to get this working...

getting the following error:

TWC:/home/tc/Desktop/vmwaredsp-1.4 # make install
make -C src install
make[1]: Entering directory `/home/tc/Desktop/vmwaredsp-1.4/src'
cc -c -g -W -Wall -O2 -fPIC -o vmdsp.o vmdsp.c
cc -shared -Wl,-version-script=vmdsp.map -o libvmdsp.so vmdsp.o -lpthread -ldl -lc
/usr/lib64/gcc/x86_64-suse-linux/4.1.2/../../../../x86_64-suse-linux/bin/ld: libvmdsp.so: undefined versioned symbol name lseek64@GLIBC_2.2.5
/usr/lib64/gcc/x86_64-suse-linux/4.1.2/../../../../x86_64-suse-linux/bin/ld: failed to set dynamic section sizes: Bad value
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
make[1]: *** [libvmdsp.so] Error 1
rm vmdsp.o
make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/tc/Desktop/vmwaredsp-1.4/src'
make: *** [install] Error 2

Any help appreciated.
Tc

Re: Make ALSA sound work in VMWare

Thomas_J — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 20:40:55 GMT

In the meanwhile I added the 64-bit support again. Please feel free to try it.

Re: Make ALSA sound work in VMWare

Thomas_J — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 20:38:27 GMT

The compiler tells you what went wrong:

vmdsp_esd.c:18:17: error: esd.h: No such file or directory

The include file esd.h is missing. I am not sure about Fedora, but usually the package you have to have installed is called esound-devel. Check with your preferred rpm database like pbone.net to find the appropriate name.

Re: Make ALSA sound work in VMWare

neuropa — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 19:00:33 GMT

Hi Thomas_J,
when I try to make install (Fedora 7) of your source code I get the following error:

# make install

make -C src install
make[1]: Entering directory `/tmp/vmwaredsp-1.4/src'
cc -c -g -W -Wall -O2 -fPIC -o vmdsp.o vmdsp.c
cc -shared -Wl,-version-script=vmdsp.map -o libvmdsp.so vmdsp.o -lpthread -ldl -lc
cc -c -g -W -Wall -O2 -fPIC -o vmdsp_esd.o vmdsp_esd.c
vmdsp_esd.c:18:17: error: esd.h: No such file or directory
vmdsp_esd.c:24: error: ESD_NAME_MAX undeclared here (not in a function)
vmdsp_esd.c: In function esdp_new_dsp:
vmdsp_esd.c:80: warning: implicit declaration of function esd_open_sound
vmdsp_esd.c: In function esdp_find_player:
vmdsp_esd.c:147: error: esd_info_t undeclared (first use in this function)
vmdsp_esd.c:147: error: (Each undeclared identifier is reported only once
vmdsp_esd.c:147: error: for each function it appears in.)
vmdsp_esd.c:147: error: ei undeclared (first use in this function)
vmdsp_esd.c:149: warning: implicit declaration of function esd_get_all_info
vmdsp_esd.c:151: error: esd_player_info_t undeclared (first use in this function)
vmdsp_esd.c:151: error: player undeclared (first use in this function)
vmdsp_esd.c:154: error: ESD_MASK_FUNC undeclared (first use in this function)
vmdsp_esd.c:162: warning: implicit declaration of function esd_free_all_info
vmdsp_esd.c: In function esdp_set_volume:
vmdsp_esd.c:178: warning: implicit declaration of function esd_set_stream_pan
vmdsp_esd.c: In function dspp_start_playback:
vmdsp_esd.c:199: error: ESD_PROTO_STREAM_PLAY undeclared (first use in this function)
vmdsp_esd.c:200: error: ESD_STREAM undeclared (first use in this function)
vmdsp_esd.c:200: error: ESD_PLAY undeclared (first use in this function)
vmdsp_esd.c:201: error: ESD_BITS16 undeclared (first use in this function)
vmdsp_esd.c:201: error: ESD_BITS8 undeclared (first use in this function)
vmdsp_esd.c:202: error: ESD_STEREO undeclared (first use in this function)
vmdsp_esd.c:202: error: ESD_MONO undeclared (first use in this function)
vmdsp_esd.c: In function mixerp_set_volume:
vmdsp_esd.c:368: error: ESD_RECORD undeclared (first use in this function)
vmdsp_esd.c:373: error: ESD_MONITOR undeclared (first use in this function)
vmdsp_esd.c:378: error: ESD_PLAY undeclared (first use in this function)
make[1]: *** [vmdsp_esd.o] Error 1
rm vmdsp.o
make[1]: Leaving directory `/tmp/vmwaredsp-1.4/src'
make: *** [install] Error 2

Where am I wrong?

Re: Make ALSA sound work in VMWare

cdma@qc.aira.com — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 04:43:38 GMT

Just use 'lowlatency' kernel packages and leave all presets as original. You will get sound through ALSA (and/or OSS if you want), on any simultaneous applications that you dare to run at once, including VMWARE, INNOTEK, PARALLELS, WIN4LIN PRO, AMAROK, name it!

It works perfectly on Kubuntu Feisty 704 (kernel 2.6.20-16-lowlatency)

Re: Make ALSA sound work in VMWare

Thomas_J — Sat, 07 Jul 2007 17:11:06 GMT

Hi folks,

I have added to Petr's vmdsp driver an ALSA-plugin. It works so far pretty well with only a few quirks:

* I removed 64-bit support for the time being to have a cleaner build structure.

Besides this, like I said above, it works pretty well. Feel free to download the source code from here:
https://www.sokrates.homelinux.net/~thomas/Private/Soft/vmwaredsp/vmwaredsp-1.4.tar.bz2
This file includes the ESD and the ARTS portion as well. This tarball (https://www.sokrates.homelinux.net/~thomas/Private/Soft/vmwaredsp/vmwaredsp-alsa-1.4.tar.bz2) contains the two additional files only.

Any feedback is appreciated.

Re: Make ALSA sound work in VMWare

kkalinux — Sat, 07 Jul 2007 03:03:52 GMT

mrkrell,
I am also running Fedora 7 . I yum install alsa-oss , then after it installed, I restarted vmware. I then had sound on XP guess and also Fedora host at same time. I still have to get the internet going yet but maybe this will help you .

Kurt

Re: Make ALSA sound work in VMWare

mrkrell — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 15:06:45 GMT

Arghh...That does not work in Fedora Core 7
There seems to be no sound adaptor detected by the windows XP guest/

I can't believe vmware support for linux is so poor..do they think we will listen
to sound in only the guest OS or the Host but not both at the same time?

Re: Make ALSA sound work in VMWare

Edoardo — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 10:01:32 GMT

with WS6 I got rid of the /dev/dsp busy ... sound will start disconnected ... message by forcing the preloading of libaoss on all vmware executable by

installing libaoss (ny host is ubuntu 704)
and then editing

/usr/lib/vmware/lib/wrapper-gtk24.sh
by inserting at the end (before the call to vm_run) the following export statement

export LD_PRELOAD=libaoss.so:$LD_PRELOAD
vm_run "$@"

seems to work for me now.

Re: Make ALSA sound work in VMWare

Sigmoid — Sat, 26 May 2007 08:34:53 GMT

Well, with 6.0, things got even worse.
Now absolutely no preloaded libs work. This basically means for me that I have no sound. Absolutely no sound.

I wonder how much work it would have been to add ALSA support. Not too much I reckon.

Is there any way of getting sound out of vmware workstation 6.0 on an ALSA system without kernel level OSS emulation? As I stated, libaoss doesn't work, and it just simply doesn't, no preload errors or anything, Vmware just states that it failed to open /dev/dsp.

Re: Make ALSA sound work in VMWare

hsk — Tue, 09 Jan 2007 09:08:21 GMT

Step 6.5:
chmod +x /usr/bin/vmware

Message was edited by:
hsk

Re: Make ALSA sound work in VMWare

noend — Wed, 08 Nov 2006 23:08:14 GMT

This is what I did in order to have VMware alsa sound on Debian:

1. sudo aptitude install alsa-oss
2. sudo chmod +s /usr/lib/libaoss.so.*
3. sudo mv /usr/bin/vmware /usr/bin/vmware2
4. sudo touch /usr/bin/vmware
5. echo '#!/bin/bash' >> /usr/bin/vmware
6. echo 'LD_PRELOAD=libaoss.so exec /usr/bin/vmware2 "$@"' >> /usr/bin/vmware
7. vmware

Tested on VMware version 5.5.2 build-29772.

Hope it helps.

Re: Make ALSA sound work in VMWare

KnuX — Sun, 22 Oct 2006 18:11:41 GMT

Preloading is possible using root access...

"sudo aoss vmware"

I don't know how to adjust libaoss permissions...

$ ll /usr/lib/libaoss*
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 15K 2006-09-11 13:26 /usr/lib/libaoss.a
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 851 2006-09-11 13:26 /usr/lib/libaoss.la
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 16 2006-10-10 23:10 /usr/lib/libaoss.so -> libaoss.so.0.0.0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 16 2006-10-10 23:10 /usr/lib/libaoss.so.0 -> libaoss.so.0.0.0
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 15K 2006-09-11 13:26 /usr/lib/libaoss.so.0.0.0

Re: Make ALSA sound work in VMWare

KnuX — Tue, 10 Oct 2006 21:19:36 GMT

$ LD_PRELOAD=libaoss.so exec vmware "$@"
/usr/lib/vmware/bin/vmware: /usr/lib/vmware/lib/libpng12.so.0/libpng12.so.0: no version information available (required by /usr/lib/libcairo.so.2)
ERROR: ld.so: object 'libaoss.so' from LD_PRELOAD cannot be preloaded: ignored.

It seems to be hard for the moment to get vmware working with alsa on Debian Testing...

Anyone has an idea of why I can diagnostic this problem in order to resolve it ?

Re: Make ALSA sound work in VMWare

p2k — Tue, 04 Jul 2006 07:04:14 GMT

Well I'd love to see that Petr's esd and arts wrappers would also support alsa natively. I once tried to patch something together, but never got very far.

I think that would really solve everyone's problems. Or even better, get ALSA support natively into vmware. Maybe for version 6.0?

thanks
Philipp

Re: Make ALSA sound work in VMWare

KnuX — Wed, 24 May 2006 10:37:13 GMT

I made a script called "starvmware" which is located in my ~/ directory :
#! /bin/bash
LD_PRELOAD=libaoss.so exec /usr/bin/vmware "$@"

It works, but for example I can't run a virtual machine which works without the script, I got this message :
Cannot open the disk '/home/knux/vmware/Windows XP Professional/Windows XP Professional.vmdk' or one of the snapshot disks it depends on.
Reason: File too large.

File is :
-rw------- 1 knux knux 2,9G 2006-05-18 18:56 Windows XP Professional.vmdk

The unique virtual machine I can use, is one with a 6Gb .vmdk file, pre-allocated. Others virtual machines have their .vmdk file > 2Gb, not pre-allocated.

Is there a workaround for this problem ? I'm on Debian Unstable and I don't understand why this happens :/

Re: Make ALSA sound work in VMWare

KnuX — Mon, 20 Feb 2006 18:28:33 GMT

Hm sorry, vmware's sound are not mixed with alsa's sound (alsaplayer for example)

Re: Make ALSA sound work in VMWare

KnuX — Mon, 20 Feb 2006 13:33:43 GMT

I notice yesterday that running "/usr/share/alsa-base/snddevices" (as root) will set a working "/dev/dsp". Only a "/dev/snd" directory exists on my Debian Unstable if I doesn't run it.

All features are on : mixer, micro support, etc.

For the virtual machine, "/dev/dsp" is the sound card, windows mixer is OK

Message was edited by:
KnuX

Re: Make ALSA sound work in VMWare

crys0000 — Wed, 18 Jan 2006 18:06:07 GMT

Finally I've made it work, it's very simple, you don't need to rename anything.
Just use this script:

#! /bin/bash
LD_PRELOAD=libaoss.so exec /opt/vmware/workstation/bin/vmware "$@"

Obviously the path depends on where you have vmware installed.

I hope this can help.
Cristiano

Re: Make ALSA sound work in VMWare

crys0000 — Tue, 17 Jan 2006 21:22:47 GMT

Could you please explain what is "vmw" in your script? No files with that name exist, maybe you mean vmware-vmx-real?

This is my vmware-vmx script:

#!/bin/sh
PATH_TO_VMWARE_BIN=`/usr/lib64/vmware/bin $0`
LD_PRELOAD=libaoss.so exec $PATH_TO_VMWARE_BIN/vmware-vmx-real

Unfortunately now when I try to power on the virtual machine I get this fatal error:

Unable to change virtual machine power state: Failed to connect to peer process.

Where is the problem?
Thanks.

Re: Make ALSA sound work in VMWare

jamespharaoh — Tue, 17 Jan 2006 16:32:59 GMT

One more point actually, this tip is posted around the net for vmware 3 but used to break in 4 and 5. I think the reason it now works again is that the newer versions of libaoss override the open64 function in addition to the open function, the newer versions of vmware use this to open the sound device.

Re: Make ALSA sound work in VMWare

DaveP — Tue, 17 Jan 2006 14:25:27 GMT

Thanks for that very useful.

Dave

Make ALSA sound work in VMWare

jamespharaoh — Tue, 17 Jan 2006 13:56:39 GMT

It is easy to get vmware to use alsa in linux, but this is not supported:

- Replace vmware-vmx with the following script:

#!/bin/sh
PATH_TO_VMWARE_BIN=`dirname $0`
LD_PRELOAD=libaoss.so exec $PATH_TO_VMWARE_BIN/vmw

This shouldn't cause any problems if the libaoss library is not installed or not setuid, it will simply work through the old OSS library as normal.

This could probably be quite easily be integrated as a configuration option into a future version of your product.

It does actually provide useful functionality as the sound is mixed with other applications using dmix.