[SOLVED] Sound card isue VMWare workstation/player and CentOS 7.5 guest

taylorkh · 07-20-2018, 07:57 AM

I am running VMWare player/workstation 12.5 on CentOS 7.5. I have a couple of CentOS 7.5 VMs which were built a few months back. They work fine including sound. More recently built VMs have no working sound. Here is my build process:

Install CentOS minimal (command line)
yum update
install yum-priorities and elep-release
set CentOS-Base repos priority=1 and epel priority=10
yum groupinstall "X Window system" mate-desktop-environment
systemctl set-default graphical.target

Examining the sound settings under the control center on the working VMs I find this hardware

Code:

ES1371/ES1373 / Creative Labs CT2518 (Audio PCI 64V/128/5200 / Creative CT4810/CT5803/CT5806 [Sound Blaster PCI])
1 Output / 2 Inputs
Analog Stereo Duplex

and on the silent machines

Code:

Ensoniq AudioPCI
1 Output / 1 Input

But it gets more interesting...

I built another VM using the same iso file but I selected Gnome Desktop rather than minimal install. This time I have sound and I find the Sound Blaster audio "hardware." Finally I just completed building a "Server with GUI" VM and it also has the Sound Blaster.

My questions are:

Why does anaconda(?) detect different hardware in the same virtual environment?

More importantly, how can I "change" the sound card in the silent VMs?

I have tried removing the sound card using Virtual Machine Settings (in VMWare player) and then adding back a sound card. I have tried the 3 "Use physical sound card" choices Auto Detect, ALSA: Default sound card and ALSA: HDA Intel PCH. The first two give me the non-working card and the third says something to the effect card not found.

TIA,

Ken

taylorkh · 07-20-2018, 05:55 PM

I did some further looking on both VMs. These results are identical.

Code:

lspci
...
02:02.0 Multimedia audio controller: Ensoniq ES1371/ES1373 / Creative Labs CT2518 (rev 02)

sudo lsmod | grep snd
snd_seq_midi           13565  0 
snd_seq_midi_event     14899  1 snd_seq_midi
snd_ens1371            25076  3 
snd_rawmidi            31294  2 snd_ens1371,snd_seq_midi
snd_ac97_codec        130556  1 snd_ens1371
ac97_bus               12730  1 snd_ac97_codec
snd_seq                62785  2 snd_seq_midi_event,snd_seq_midi
snd_seq_device         14356  3 snd_seq,snd_rawmidi,snd_seq_midi
snd_pcm               101643  2 snd_ac97_codec,snd_ens1371
snd_timer              29810  2 snd_pcm,snd_seq
snd                    79215  13 snd_ac97_codec,snd_timer,snd_pcm,snd_seq,snd_rawmidi,snd_ens1371,snd_seq_device
soundcore              15047  1 snd

Only the Sound Preferences applet under Control Center; Hardware shows a difference. And of course on the no sound VM I cannot configure the bogus sound device in Sound Preferences.

Ken

taylorkh · 07-22-2018, 02:07 PM

One of the great benefits of these forums is that, even when an answer is not forthcoming, the process of writing an intelligent question helps me to focus on what I am after. It helps to clarify things in my mind. In doing some more research I came across a web site which made a comment to the effect that installing CentOS minimal, then X Window system and then the desired desktop environment sometimes left out some packages. I suspected that something was missing or wrong. So...

I determined the packages installed on the working VM (rpm -q -l | sort > working.txt) and did the same on the silent VM. I compared the two lists with my favorite comparison utility Beyond Compare (scootersoftware.com) and looked for anything which smelled like a sound related package. The guilty missing package was pulseaudio. I installed that package on the silent VM (from CentOS-Base) and, after adjusting the output sound level above 0, I had sound

I have no idea why this package used to be installed but is not any longer. However, I do know how to make my silent VMs speak!

Cheers,

Ken