[0.16.51] Audio disabled in Ubuntu 19.04

[stenpett]

I upgraded to the development branch of Ubuntu 19.04 today. Now, whenever the game launches, I get to the main menu, and a pop-up displays with the message "Couldn't initialize audio. Audio disabled". The game plays fine, but it's really not the same without sound...

Pulseaudio and oss-compat is installed, and audio is working in the OS and other games. The game was working as expected with Ubuntu 18.10.

I have tried both the steam version, and the version downloaded directly from the website, and the audio is disabled in both.

Ubuntu 19.04
kernel 4.18.0-13-generic
Ryzen 5 2500U
Radeon Vega 8
8 GB RAM (Shared)

[TruePikachu]

Code: Select all

   0.531 No '/dev/dsp' device available in your system.

   0.531 Perhaps Open Sound System is not installed or running.

   0.531 Failed to init OSS.

   0.531 No audio driver can be used. (error code: 1)

Does the device actually exist as such?

[stenpett]

No. There's no /dev/dsp

But like I said, the sound is working in the OS, and oss-compat and oss4-base is installed, so it *should* work. Running systemctl status oss4-base confirms that the module is Active.

[Oxyd]

Well if you don't have the device then it obviously shouldn't work.

Factorio can use either ALSA or OSS – you might have better luck with ALSA. Try installing libasound2 and libasound2-plugins, if you don't have them installed already.

Either way, this looks like a configuration issue. Although we should probably look into supporting PulseAudio in the future.

[stenpett]

Thank you for the help so far. libasound2 and libasound2-plugins were already installed. How do I force the game to use ALSA instead of OSS?

[stenpett]

Hah! Fixed it!

After reading about other people with missing /dev/dsp, I came across a pulseaudo oss proxy daemon, and installing this worked!

So just for the record, here's what I did to make it work:

sudo apt install osspd

[stenpett]

I might have celebrated a bit prematurely. Installing osspd gave me audio, but the music sounds horribly garbled. Like it's trying to play the entire song at once, or at 10 times speed.

But hey! Progress!

[stenpett]

Here's a recording of how the music sounds

https://youtu.be/7SfxnWe1mRU

[stenpett]

I have installed Majaro on this PC now, since I couldn't get the sound working properly.

In Manjaro, there is no /dev/dsp, but the sound is working properly. I don't have any trace of OSS installed either.

[Jaypad]

I encounter the same problem as OP, audio is disabled in Linux Mint 19.1 using Factorio 0.17.4.
Sound works fine in other applications, and in older versions of Factorio.

Edit : It doesn't work anymore with older versions of Factorio. I don't know what has changed, it was working when I last played 0.17.3

[premier69]

Hah! Fixed it!

After reading about other people with missing /dev/dsp, I came across a pulseaudo oss proxy daemon, and installing this worked!

So just for the record, here's what I did to make it work:

sudo apt install osspd

Thank You! sir, this was just what I needed.

[Jaypad]

Yes, by installing osspd, sound is enabled again. But listen to it... we have a big audio quality problem.
(and sound was working fine without osspd before)

[Maldela]

Same problem on Arch. Alsa is broken and OSS is terribly garbled.

[eggsome]

Another 19.04 user here.
osspd get's me poor/distorted sound too.
How can I force factorio to use Alsa or Pulseaudio?

[hrrand]

For me, starting only factorio works fine. Starting when other pulseaudio source is playing - e.g. firefox+youtube - factorio can't find /dev/dsp.
One option is to use padsp wrapper.

padsp ./factorio

This works on stand-alone executable, not for steam version. Also, other (pulseaudio) sound source should be playing at the same time.
Launching firefox+youtube after executing factiorio with padsp, youtube videos will not start to play.

Another observation - mpv falls back to alsa output when factorio is working and has no sound issues.

[Oxyd]

Alright, I added PulseAudio support to 0.17.54. This also means that PulseAudio will now be required, which I'm sure will make at least some people extremely happy.

Let's see if Pulse improves the sound situation.

[gibbo3771]

Alright, I added PulseAudio support to 0.17.54. This also means that PulseAudio will now be required, which I'm sure will make at least some people extremely happy

Very. I just killed my Windows install for good because Factorio is the only game I really play now. I almost died inside when I launched it and had no sound. I shall await patiently for release!