scummvm sound doesn't work in hardy

[Paulo Albuquerque]

Binary package hint: scummvm

I had gibbon and installed scummvm from universe and it worked flawlessly. Now I upgraded to hardy doing a fresh install. When I installed scummvm I tried several games (including some that worked before) and the sound didn't work in any of them.

Maybe it is a Pulse Audio issue? If you need any more info please say so, thanks.

pmfa@sidra:/tmp$ uname -a
Linux sidra 2.6.24-16-generic #1 SMP Thu Apr 10 12:47:45 UTC 2008 x86_64 GNU/Linux

pmfa@sidra:/tmp$ lsb_release -rd
Description: Ubuntu 8.04
Release: 8.04

pmfa@sidra:/tmp$ apt-cache policy scummvm
scummvm:
  Installed: 0.11.1-1
  Candidate: 0.11.1-1
  Version table:
 *** 0.11.1-1 0
        500 http://pt.archive.ubuntu.com hardy/universe Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

[Paulo Albuquerque (paulo.albuquerque)]

As a workaround I can use:

pasuspender scummvm

When i don't use pasuspender and I run it from the shell i get:

Using configuration file: /home/pmfa/.scummvmrc
ALSA lib pcm_dmix.c:874:(snd_pcm_dmix_open) unable to open slave
WARNING: Could not open audio device: No available audio device!
Looking for ft
Trying to start game 'Full Throttle'
WARNING: Sound mixer initialization failed!
WARNING: Language file is forced to be ignored!

[Edisman (edisman)]

I couldn't get sound working by using pasuspender

I got sound working in scummvm by running
sudo apt-get install libsdl1.2debian-pulseaudio

When doing this, apt-get removed the libsdl1.2debian-alsa package.

Could this have any other negative consequences?

[Ilja (ilja-bezrukov)]

I can confirm this bug on my freshly updated Ubuntu 8.04. Using pasuspender helps, however.

[Anthony Mattheakakis (antony256)]

I don't know if it will help, but I had the same issue after installing kubuntu on ubuntu hardy (and then removing gnome). Al I did was to install libsdl1.2debian-alsa which removed libsdl1.2debian-pulseaudio.

[Hazim Gazov (hazim-gazov)]

it seems that libsdl1.2debian-pulseaudio is not uninstalled when pulseaudio is, therefore any SDL apps seem to experience sounds breakage if they aren't smart enough to figure out that pulseaudio isn't actually installed. Is it possible to recommend or suggest to install this when pulseaudio is removed?

[Brice Terzaghi (terzag)]

I can confirm the problem : when using PulseAudio and not having libsdl-pulseaudio installed, ScummVM plays no sound, hangs and crashes on my system on quit (eating 100% CPU).
If I install libsdl-pulseaudio, it fixes the problem but other apps rely on libsdl-alsa and don't work anymore then.

Installing libsdl-all doesn't work either : it seems that it doesn't include the PA support or the ALSA one supercedes it (whatever : ScummVM plays no sound).

[Daniel T Chen (crimsun)]

Is this symptom still reproducible in 8.10 or 9.04? As of 8.10, alsa-plugins ships a configuration that routes all native alsa apps through pa.

[Paulo Albuquerque (paulo.albuquerque)]

In 8.10 there is still no sound. However after leaving your comment I've running some experiments, there is no sound output but there aren't any errors either. I tried running scummvm with debugging messages enabled, and there's a lot of output but nothing about sound errors.

Also, using pasuspender no longer works as a workaround. I haven't found any way to get sound to work again.

[Paulo Albuquerque (paulo.albuquerque)]

I installed 9.04 on a test machine everything just works.

[Digit (digit-siljrath)]

using 9.04, tried with and without pasuspender, with libsdl-pulseaudio, with libsdl-alsa, both with and without pulseaudio each time. i think i've probably borked my audio from all my messing around attempting to get sound to work with scummvm games. even tried running system update, still no audio joy. worked effortlessly in my sabayon box.

[Juan Orti Alcaine (juan.orti)]

I have tried in two differents 9.04 installations and sound in scummvm doesn't work.

There are not any error messages about sound, and I have tried installing libsdl-pulseaudio, using pasuspender, etc. but no way.

Any idea?

[cocoshaker (cocoshaker)]

I'm using Kubuntu 9.10 and finally got ScummVM's sound work.
Here is what one can try :

* install pulseaudio and libsdl-pulseaudio packages
* reboot
* on the terminal used to launch scummvm, first do : export SDL_AUDIODRIVER="pulse"
* launch scummvm.

At this point I had no longer the "WARNING: Could not open audio device: No available audio device!" message but I still couldn't hear any sound. If the situation is the same for you, try what follows :

* launch alsamixer command in a terminal and set the sound higher ! You do that by using up arrow key. Set it at least to 37 and leave with escape. Of course you can also change the sound graphically, in which case you have to set the PCM bar quite high (I personnally have it at the max).

So now I have ScummVM fully working but I have some other problems to solve, cause since I made pulseaudio work, other applications got their sound off (Flashplayer).

[cocoshaker (cocoshaker)]

Forget about the last thing I said concerning Flashplayer, it's working :P