# sound in vmware workstation not working

## jorgeinglessis

Hi there, I'm using gentoo as the host system and I have a vmware virtual machine with windows 2000 as guest OS. When I'm not playing any sound and start up the virtual machine every thing works ok, but if I'm playing any sound, I get this message when I start the guest OS:

```
Failed to open sound device /dev/dsp: Device or resource busy

Failed to connect virtual device sound.
```

I think it's a conflict with alsa. I'm using an x86_64 system.

Thanks in advance for your replies

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## widremann

I think VMWare may be using OSS which on Linux doesn't allow multiple programs to share the sound card.  I have VMWare server, but this should work for you as well: stop whatever is playing the sound, close it if possible and then go to the VM settings menu, and uncheck and check the "Connected' checkbox for the soundcard.  It should start working again, even with a running VM.

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## jorgeinglessis

thanks for your reply, but is there any way to get sound in both host and guest machines simultaneously?

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## paulbiz

I'm using ALSA, if I start vmware with aoss and it will emulate the OSS /dev/dsp with ALSA... seems to work great  :Smile: 

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## jorgeinglessis

how can I start vmware with oss?

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## agent_jdh

 *jorgeinglessis wrote:*   

> how can I start vmware with oss?

 

aoss vmware

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## jorgeinglessis

thanks but it still doesn't work.

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## jorgeinglessis

when I start aoss vmware, I get this message:

```
ERROR: ld.so: object 'libaoss.so' from LD_PRELOAD cannot be preloaded: ignored
```

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## agent_jdh

Do you have the alsa-oss package installed?

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## jorgeinglessis

yes, I do

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## agent_jdh

Do you use the alsa-driver ebuild, or the in-kernel modules?

If you use the alsa-driver ebuild, you'll need to set the oss USE flag and re-emerge alsa-driver.

If you use the kernel drivers, do you have OSS compatability set (e.g. mixer API, PCM API, etc)?

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## jorgeinglessis

I've tried both alsa-driver with oss flag and kernel modules with oss compatibility, but I get the same error, thanks for your interest.

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## nuggien

Any updates to this?  I'm having the same problem, even with using aoss.

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## user

Trick with LD_PRELOAD is setuid of vmware binary.

Futher OSS flag is not necessary, so do:

```

root # emerge alsa-oss

root # emerge emul-linux-x86-soundlibs

root # ls -al /usr/lib32/libaoss.so*

lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root    16 Mar 25 02:07 /usr/lib32/libaoss.so -> libaoss.so.0.0.0

lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root    16 Mar 25 02:07 /usr/lib32/libaoss.so.0 -> libaoss.so.0.0.0

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 17668 Nov 25 23:04 /usr/lib32/libaoss.so.0.0.0

root # chmod u+s /usr/lib32/libaoss.so.0.0.0

root # ls -al /usr/lib32/libaoss.so*

lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root    16 Mar 25 02:07 /usr/lib32/libaoss.so -> libaoss.so.0.0.0

lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root    16 Mar 25 02:07 /usr/lib32/libaoss.so.0 -> libaoss.so.0.0.0

-rwsr-xr-x 1 root root 17668 Nov 25 23:04 /usr/lib32/libaoss.so.0.0.0

user # aoss /opt/vmware/workstation/bin/vmware

```

Select /dev/dsp as sound device.

Now have sound in host and guest OS.

----------

## Bigun

Try emerging gentoolkit:

```
emerge -va gentoolkit
```

Then see if any packages are broken:

```
revdep-rebuild
```

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## jebas

I was having the same problem.  Alsa worked for everything except for vmplayer.  In trying to solve the problem, I noticed that the kernel version of alsa was 1.0.15 while all of the supporting files were at 1.0.16.  Once I made everything version 1.0.15, it all worked again.

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