[fedora-virt] Losing sound in Win XP qemu-kvm guest

[Gilboa Davara]

On Wed, 2010-06-02 at 10:49 -0400, jah wrote:
> I'm running a Windows XP (32-bit) guest on my Fedora 13 x86_64 Gnome 
> desktop system using command line qemu-kvm.  In XP I'm using the Sound 
> Blaster card as the default as it has better sound.  The Intel card 
> warbles and the sound breaks up.  After running the guest for a day or 
> two I lose sound.  If I switch to the Intel card I get sound back but 
> like I said, the Intel card doesn't work as well.  I have a multiboot 
> system and when I boot into Gentoo I have the same problem if I run KVM 
> as a module.   When it's compiled into the kernel I do not have this 
> problem.  In Gentoo the Intel card seems to have better sound but 
> switching cards after loosing sound doesn't usually restore it.  I log 
> into Gnome using my non-privileged account but run qemu-kvm as root (my 
> user is in the kvm and audio groups however) using this command line:
> 
> /bin/nice -n-19 /usr/bin/qemu-kvm \
>   -hda ${DIR}/${IMAGE} \
>   -vga std \
>   -no-quit \
>   -no-frame \
>   -name "Windows XP" \
>   -usb \
>   -usbdevice tablet \
>   -daemonize \
>   -soundhw all \
>   -localtime \
>   -m 3584 \
>   -mem-path /hugepages \
>   -monitor telnet:127.0.0.1:4444,server,nowait \
>   -net nic,vlan=0,model=virtio,macaddr=00:1b:fc:9a:75:21 \
>   -net tap,vlan=0
> 
> selinux is running in permissive mode.  I have an Asus M2R32-MVP 
> motherboard with integrated audio, 8gb memory and an AMD Phenom 9950 
> Quad-Core Processor.  The audio device is:
> 
> 00:14.2 Audio device: ATI Technologies Inc SBx00 Azalia (Intel HDA)
>      Subsystem: ATI Technologies Inc SBx00 Azalia (Intel HDA)
>      Flags: bus master, slow devsel, latency 64, IRQ 31
>      Memory at f7bf4000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
>      Capabilities: [50] Power Management version 2
>      Capabilities: [60] MSI: Enable+ Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit+
>      Kernel driver in use: HDA Intel
>      Kernel modules: snd-hda-intel
> 
> My script exports QEMU_AUDIO_DRV=alsa before starting the guest.  I just 
> realized that I forgot to change it to QEMU_AUDIO_DRV=pa when I starting 
> using Fedora.  Obviously it still works set as alsa and I doubt that is 
> the cause of my problem since I have the same problem in Gentoo when 
> running KVM as a module.  I'll give QEMU_AUDIO_DRV=pa a try the next 
> time I restart the guest but would appreciate any info on known issues 
> or advise on the best audio settings so that hopefully I won't lose my 
> sound.  I have dual monitors and leave XP running all the time on the 
> right monitor.  I long for the day when I don't have anything that needs 
> to run in Windows and I can be Microsoft free but in the mean time 
> running XP in a virtual jail is a lot better than running it natively.  
> Getting sound working correctly would be nice in the mean time.
> 

Seeing the same.
My script defaults to PA.

Looking at the console, I see that qemu is getting connection refused.
I'd imagine that the problem is that my scripts runs as root (I use only
bridged networks), and PA (per-user) is getting rejected.

What I don't understand is - why it worked just fine under F12, and why
it doesn't work now? Though, I have a feeling that this a PA issue - not
qemu.

- Gilboa