I have an Ubuntu Server which hosts VMs running on VMware Server 2.0. These VMs cannot get sound because VMware thinks there is no sound device on the host because it is not enabled, how do I get sound to work?


Ubuntu Server 9.04 x64
Chipset: nVidia nForce 4

person@place:~$ uname -a
Linux place 2.6.28-14-server #47-Ubuntu SMP Sat Jul 25 02:03:55 UTC 2009 x86_64 GNU/Linux


Sound information for the host:

person@place:~$ lspci -v|less
00:04.0 Multimedia audio controller: nVidia Corporation CK804 AC'97 Audio Controller (rev a2)
Subsystem: Micro-Star International Co., Ltd. Device 7585
Flags: bus master, 66MHz, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 22
I/O ports at f000 [size=256]
I/O ports at ec00 [size=256]
Memory at fe02d000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4K]
Capabilities: <access denied>
Kernel driver in use: Intel ICH
Kernel modules: snd-intel8x0

person@place:~$ aplay -l
aplay: device_list:217: no soundcards found...

person@place:~$ sudo asoundconf list
Names of available sound cards:
CK804

person@place:~$ alsamixer
alsamixer: function snd_ctl_open failed for default: No such file or directory

person@place:~$ lsmod | grep snd
snd_intel8x0 43816 0
snd_ac97_codec 133848 1 snd_intel8x0
ac97_bus 10368 1 snd_ac97_codec
snd_pcm 99464 2 snd_intel8x0,snd_ac97_codec
snd_timer 34064 1 snd_pcm
snd 78920 4 snd_intel8x0,snd_ac97_codec,snd_pcm,snd_timer
soundcore 16800 1 snd
snd_page_alloc 18704 2 snd_intel8x0,snd_pcm

Enable sound device on the host, or maybe redirect sound output to /dev/null like VirtualBox can do.

I know I have to enable sound on the host; my question is how do I actually do it? I found a number of threads here and elsewhere of people asking the same thing, no one has said how to do it via command line though. (This server does not have a GUI)

Well enabling sound usually just needs to be done by having the appropriate driver loaded do you know what kind of audio hardware you have in the server? If not maybe you can post an lspci output and we can look into it with you.

This was in my first post:

person@place:~$ lspci -v|less
00:04.0 Multimedia audio controller: nVidia Corporation CK804 AC'97 Audio Controller (rev a2)
Subsystem: Micro-Star International Co., Ltd. Device 7585
Flags: bus master, 66MHz, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 22
I/O ports at f000 [size=256]
I/O ports at ec00 [size=256]
Memory at fe02d000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4K]
Capabilities: <access denied>
Kernel driver in use: Intel ICH
Kernel modules: snd-intel8x0

I tried "sudo modprobe -a snd-intel8x0" which produced no errors, but when I try to add a sound adapter on a VM I get: Cannot connect virtual device sound. No corresponding device is available on the host.

Any ideas?