VMware: Failed to Open Sound Device

Rai    Linux, Microsoft, Troubleshooting     esd, fedora, Linux, sound, virtualization, vmware, windows

When using VMware for virtualization, you might encounter an error related to your sound device:

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

If you see this error, this means the sound device in your host machine is currently in use and the VMware client is not able to access the device. Here is also a little bit of information from the vmware knowledge base:

Some other program is using the sound device. You must quit that program first. While every virtual machine on a host can be configured with a sound device, only one virtual machine at a time can actively use the device. If another virtual machine is currently using it, simply terminate the application inside it that is producing sound.

Another possible cause is that the Enlightenment Sound Daemon is running and using the sound device. VMware recommends you turn off the Enlightenment Sound Daemon.

Though I have not found a way to fix this yet, there is a workaround that might help if you want to use sounds in your virtual machine. You might want to kill all esd processes:

# killall esd

You might need to restart your VMware service for the changes to take effect. This method will get the sound device available for your guest OS.

I have tested this on my machine running Fedora 7on my host machine and VMware Server 1.04 with Windows XP as guest OS. Works like a charm.