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No sound: Oracle Linux host, Vbox 4.1.12, pulseaudio

Posted: 17. May 2012, 09:18
by amatantsev
Have been beating my head on this for a while with no success...

I have an Oracle Linux host (5u6, kernel 2.6.32, x86_64), running a user-specific pulseaudio server daemon. Running paplay /usr/share/sounds/phone.wav produces sound, as expected.

VirtualBox 4.1.12 / Windows 7 guest is running, configured to use pulseaudio interface with Intel HD emulation. No sound from the windows guest.

No errors reported neither by Vbox nor by Windows: both report functioning "hardware". The vbox log does show an error: "HDAcodec: can't open out fmt(freq: 44100)". Please, see the attachment to see all of the messages related to Audio.

pulseaudio daemon (running with level 4 logging level) does report connections with the Vbox instance, same exact messages when using paplay successfully (please, see the attached log file). I deduce that Vbox indeed is connecting to the PA daemon, as expected.

strace of PA daemon shows no activity whenever I attempt at playing any sound on the guest, while it does show plenty of activity when using paplay. This tells me that the signal from guest does not make it through the Vbox emulation.

tried using AC97 emulation for the guest - no success

Could anyone please give me some more ideas for solutions? Any way to troubleshoot this in the Vbox itself?

Thanks!

Alex.

Re: No sound: Oracle Linux host, Vbox 4.1.12, pulseaudio

Posted: 17. May 2012, 14:44
by Perryg
What is the guest?
Posting log file post the complete log file (as an attachment)

Re: No sound: Oracle Linux host, Vbox 4.1.12, pulseaudio

Posted: 17. May 2012, 16:19
by amatantsev
Hi,

The guest is Windows 7. However, I could not get the sound to work with other guests - Win XP and Fedora Live CD. No sound for any of the kind. Attaching the full VBox.log for the Windows 7 guest, which is the guest I am trying to get going. Thanks for your attention!

Alex.

Re: No sound: Oracle Linux host, Vbox 4.1.12, pulseaudio

Posted: 17. May 2012, 16:43
by Perryg
Which version of libSDL in the host using?

Re: No sound: Oracle Linux host, Vbox 4.1.12, pulseaudio

Posted: 17. May 2012, 17:05
by amatantsev
The file name of the library is /usr/lib64/libSDL-1.2.so.0.7.3

-sh-3.2$ rpm -q -i SDL
Name : SDL Relocations: (not relocatable)
Version : 1.2.10 Vendor: Oracle USA
Release : 8.el5 Build Date: Wed 06 Jun 2007 05:31:44 PM EDT
Install Date: Wed 01 Feb 2012 11:56:15 PM EST Build Host: ca-build14
Group : System Environment/Libraries Source RPM: SDL-1.2.10-8.el5.src.rpm
Size : 492908 License: LGPL
Signature : DSA/SHA1, Thu 07 Jun 2007 08:17:47 PM EDT, Key ID 66ced3de1e5e0159

Summary : A cross-platform multimedia library.
Description :
Simple DirectMedia Layer (SDL) is a cross-platform multimedia library
designed to provide fast access to the graphics frame buffer and audio
device.
Name : SDL Relocations: (not relocatable)
Version : 1.2.10 Vendor: Oracle USA
Release : 8.el5 Build Date: Wed 06 Jun 2007 05:33:20 PM EDT
Install Date: Wed 01 Feb 2012 11:56:56 PM EST Build Host: ca-build14
Group : System Environment/Libraries Source RPM: SDL-1.2.10-8.el5.src.rpm
Size : 550476 License: LGPL
Signature : DSA/SHA1, Thu 07 Jun 2007 08:25:27 PM EDT, Key ID 66ced3de1e5e0159

Summary : A cross-platform multimedia library.
Description :
Simple DirectMedia Layer (SDL) is a cross-platform multimedia library
designed to provide fast access to the graphics frame buffer and audio
device.

Thanks!

Alex.

Re: No sound: Oracle Linux host, Vbox 4.1.12, pulseaudio

Posted: 17. May 2012, 17:19
by Perryg
This happens rarely and not well known why but you might be able to upgrade to libsdl-1.2.14 and get this to work or maybe install the latest version of VirtualBox (4.1.14)
Other than that you would need to report this to bugtracker

Re: No sound: Oracle Linux host, Vbox 4.1.12, pulseaudio

Posted: 11. Sep 2012, 08:03
by amatantsev
I had this resolved, in case someone wants to know - it ended up the pulseaudio. Somehow, Virtualbox just sets the connection with the older pulseaudio daemon (0.9.1?) (perhaps, due to the older library libpulse 0.4x) to be either mute or directed to some unknown output - connection to pulse daemon was established but no sound. I just had to download the source (v2.1), compile it, install it, and, with the connection to the new daemon - the sound appeared. I certainly wasted a whole bunch of time since I didn't suspect pulse - paplay and other Linux utilities were playing through it just fine!