Sound not working on Ubuntu 9.10 (VMware Fusion 3.0.0 on an iMac)

[eleetselad]

I'm running VMware Fusion 3.0.0 on an iMac. I have created an Ubuntu 9.10 (released version) Virtual Appliance. All seems fine except there is no SOUND.

Any suggestions for a fix? Thanks!

[matthewls]

I just created a new ubuntu 9.10 VM with Fusion 3 on a MBP 3.1. It works fantastically well -- seamless windows appear nicer and faster than any windows version that I've tried.

But, when I tried to play an MP3 file with the rhythmbox music player, it played ~60x fast-- a 3 min song finished at ultrasonic squirrel speeds in 3 sec.

I'll try another music player, but internet radio in RB seemed chopped too.

Otherwise, it's Ubuntu 9.10 is so nice I'm tempted to switch to it and run VMware workstation to host windows.....

[gadam]

I've experienced the same problem!

gd

[SvenGus]

Same here, with Ubuntu 9.10 and Fusion 3: BTW, the sound problem was also present with the respective beta releases of Ubuntu and Fusion.

[bobsg5]

Uninstall PulseAudio and enable esound. That got the sound back for me (MBP early 2008, Snow Leopard, Ubuntu 9.10, VMware Fusion 3)

[eleetselad]

Can you provide a specific 'sudo apt-get remove' command that will do this. I've tried doing this without success. Thanks.

[eleetselad]

To answer my own question .... after 'sudo apt-get remove pulseaudio'

a quick test reveals system sounds and at least some audio playback is working.

[eleetselad]

One immediate side-effect to removing pulseaudio ...

System/Preferences/Sound pops up the attached Screenshot. Is there a way to configure pulseaudio without breaking ability to configure sound?

[rcardona2k]

Thanks this brought karmic sound to my koala. Everything is now working in 9.10 for me, Tools, Unity and now sound.

[matthewls]

Getting rid of pulse audio fixed sound here. Thanks!

[mykmelez]

sudo apt-get remove pulseaudio says it'll also remove ubuntu-desktop, which depends on pulseaudio; apt-cache show ubuntu-desktop says "it is recommended that (ubuntu-desktop) not be removed;" and this post in the Ubuntu forum makes the case that pulseaudio is replacing in esound in GNOME, and GNOME will become more dependent on pulseaudio over time.

So it doesn't seem like removing pulseaudio is a good idea in the long run, although it may resolve the problems people are having in the short term.

[GCWF]

Hmmm. My system sounds seem to be working OK with a default install of 9.10 + VMware Tools. Is it just in playing full MP3 files, etc. that the issues show up?

[rcardona2k]

Sound was non-functional on my Ubuntu x86 9.10 fresh install. I occasionally heard short buzzes but nothing coherent. I received no warnings removing pulseaudio and adding esound fixed sound so I could hear the login chime, all alert sounds afterwards.

[SvenGus]

So, essentially it looks like this is something that must be solved in the (not too) long term on the VMware Fusion side (as PulseAudio is going to stay there on the Ubuntu side)...?

P.S.: I've just tried Ubuntu 9.10 in the newly released Parallels Desktop 5 (trial), and there sound - and thus PulseAudio - works as expected right form the beginning: so it shouldn't be too difficult to fix it also in Fusion.

[shanen]

Didn't work for my upgrade to Koala on a Lenovo ThinkPad X61. I uninstalled and tried before and after rebooting. I guess I need to search around more for some diagnostic information... Good thing it's just a scratch monkey, but such problems do keep me from relying on VMware for anything serious. Educational purposes only, in my case?

[Dryvlyne]

Anyone know if a bug has been officially filed? If not, how does one go about doing this?

I too am having sound issues with Ubuntu 9.10, however I'm using Fusion 2.0.6. I uninstalled PulseAudio and it made no difference. I'm running Fusion on a MacBook Pro (model 3,1) 2.4Ghz CPU and 4GB of RAM. I'm inclined to think this is a Fusion driver issue since another poster indicated he has sound under Parallels 5. Hopefully the Fusion team will get out an update to address this.

[Dryvlyne]

Okay, I don't think it is a problem with Fusion after all, but indeed something with Pulseaudio. Using the Synaptic Package Manager in Ubuntu I marked pulseaudio for Complete Removal. Although I did this before it had no effect and that's because it does NOT remove the gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio package. I had to also mark this for Complete Removal as well. Since completely removing both of these packages I have been able to successfully playback MP3 files without further issue.

FWIW, I also came across this lengthy audio troubleshooting guide on the Ubuntu forums:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=843012

Though I didn't come across anything that allowed me to keep Pulseaudio installed and playing my audio files perhaps it may be useful to others.

[markdc]

If you completely removed pulseaudio you may need to run sudo apt-get esound

To get a workable control panel you can use the older gnome sound control panel.

http://www.4front-tech.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=3324

Quick takeaway:

-

---

"....For Ubuntu 9.10: one cannot access the sound preferences without having

PulseAudio installed (i.e. clicking on System->Preferences->Sound

results in an error message "waiting for sound system to respond").

However, one can still run the old gnome-sound-properties with a couple

of files. The attached file has 32bit/x86 and 64bit/x86-64 versions of

the old gnome-sound-properties program . Move sound-properties.glade

(this file is not architecture-dependent) to

/usr/local/share/gnome-control-center/glade/ (you'll probably need to

create this directory). Move the appropriate version of the

gnome-sound-properties file to /usr/local/bin. You can run this program

from the command-line or create a shortcut for it..."

-

---

Once done I created a launcher from the panel for the gnome-sound-properties--works fine.

It would be nice to eventually tune all the fusion/9.10 pulse issues, but for the fast fix removing pulse audio and installing esound along with adding in the gnome-sound-properties bin worked fine for the meantime.

[BrianRowland]

FYI, "sudo apt-get remove pulseaudio" worked fine for me using ubuntu 9.10 on a Mac Book Pro (10.6.1) on VMWare Fusion 2.06.

[nbe]

The ubuntu-desktop package is just a meta package: it only links to other packages that will be installed/removed when you invoke the install/remove commands. Upon removing pulseaudio (which causes an awful lot of sounds related problems on different distributions; users have been ranting about ever since it's being used in Ubuntu and others) you might be notified that this is part of the ubuntu-desktop meta package and this will be unselected. You can safely acknowledge this message as it will only unmark the ubuntu-desktop package as being installed, it will not change anything else and it won't remove any package.

Same story goes for kubuntu-desktop (for kubuntu users) and xubuntu-desktop (xubuntu users).