I would work around this issue by applying "export QEMU_AUDIO_DRV=none" to shell before we run the qemu command.
-- You received this bug notification because you are a member of qemu- devel-ml, which is subscribed to QEMU. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1816052 Title: qemu system emulator fails to start if no sound card is present on host Status in QEMU: New Bug description: A plain build from git master at 81dbcfa9e1d8bab3f7c4cc923c0b40cd666f374f on Fedora 29 x86_64 host, with no options passed to configure. Trying to launch QEMU on a host with no audio card present: # ls /dev/snd/ seq timer It will fail to initialize alsa and abort startup: # qemu-system-x86_64 -cdrom Fedora-Workstation-Live-x86_64-29-1.2.iso -m 4000 -vnc 0.0.0.0:1 ALSA lib confmisc.c:767:(parse_card) cannot find card '0' ALSA lib conf.c:4555:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_card_driver returned error: No such file or directory ALSA lib confmisc.c:392:(snd_func_concat) error evaluating strings ALSA lib conf.c:4555:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_concat returned error: No such file or directory ALSA lib confmisc.c:1246:(snd_func_refer) error evaluating name ALSA lib conf.c:4555:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_refer returned error: No such file or directory ALSA lib conf.c:5034:(snd_config_expand) Evaluate error: No such file or directory ALSA lib pcm.c:2565:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM default alsa: Could not initialize DAC alsa: Failed to open `default': alsa: Reason: No such file or directory ALSA lib confmisc.c:767:(parse_card) cannot find card '0' ALSA lib conf.c:4555:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_card_driver returned error: No such file or directory ALSA lib confmisc.c:392:(snd_func_concat) error evaluating strings ALSA lib conf.c:4555:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_concat returned error: No such file or directory ALSA lib confmisc.c:1246:(snd_func_refer) error evaluating name ALSA lib conf.c:4555:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_refer returned error: No such file or directory ALSA lib conf.c:5034:(snd_config_expand) Evaluate error: No such file or directory ALSA lib pcm.c:2565:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM default alsa: Could not initialize DAC alsa: Failed to open `default': alsa: Reason: No such file or directory init fail audio: Failed to create voice `pcspk' qemu-system-x86_64: Initialization of device isa-pcspk failed: Initializing audio voice failed git bisect blames this change: commit 6a48541873f14b597630283f8f5397674ad82ea9 (HEAD, refs/bisect/bad) Author: Gerd Hoffmann <kra...@redhat.com> Date: Thu Jan 24 12:20:55 2019 +0100 audio: probe audio drivers by default Add the drivers listed in audio_possible_drivers to audio_drv_list, using the try-* variants. That way the probable drivers are compiled by default if possible. Additioal tweaks: linux: reorder to: pa alsa sdl oss. *bsd: drop pa. Signed-off-by: Gerd Hoffmann <kra...@redhat.com> Message-id: 20190124112055.547-7-kra...@redhat.com This changed our probe order: Linux) - audio_drv_list="oss" + audio_drv_list="try-pa try-alsa try-sdl oss" After some debugging I can see that 'audio_init' successfully initializes the alsa driver. When the pcspk devices goes to AUD_open_out though, the alsa driver fails spewing the above text to stderr and thus causes QEMU to fail. This looks very much like the ALSA driver in QEMU is broken - audio_init() should not have succeeded unless the ALSA driver knew it could later succesfully honour AUD_open_out. To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/qemu/+bug/1816052/+subscriptions
