SecondLife and 32bit/64bit Ubuntu and the easy fix for no sound

This does not fix sound for streaming media. That is a separate issue with gstreamer and should only be a problem for 64bit users.

Ok, well I will say that the fix was not easy to find but it is easy to do…. go figure. First off the distributions of secondlife even the newest beta versions and all other variants like Emerald(which I use) and CoolViewer come with an older version of libopenal.1. That also goes for Ubuntu even the newest 9.10(Karmic). I didn’t really research which version they came with I just know its older then the one required for being able to use openal with pulseaudio. Direct pulseaudio support didnt come into openal until 1.10 so up until this point you could possibly get openal to use alsa which pulseaudio has a plugin for. The only problem with the alsa plugin is its unstable and for some reason openal seems to make it scream. Maybe its the load it puts on it or something I don’t know. I do know that VLC using the alsa plugin for pulseaudio studders a little bit but works ok. So the solution to no audio for secondlife in Ubuntu 64bit and really 32bit is to compile a newer version of libopenal which is simple enough. Now for the 32bit version its a little bit easier because you just compile it like normal and move the libopenal.1.11.753 to the lib folder of secondlife and continue from there. Here is the step by step instructions to do so:

• Step 1 – get essentials

  First we need to make sure you have all the essential build material installed like gcc and cmake so liked go ahead and install that stuff:

  # sudo apt-get install build-essential cmake libpulse-dev
  for 64bit you need to also install multilib support so that you can compile the 32bit version:
  # sudo apt-get install gcc-4.4-multilib gcc-multilib libc6-dev-i386

• Step 2 – get openal and open it up

  Then we must download the latest openal which at the time of this artical is 1.10.622:

  # wget http://kcat.strangesoft.net/openal-releases/openal-soft-1.11.753.tar.bz2
  # tar -jxvf openal-soft-1.10.622.tar.bz2
  # cd openal-soft-1.10.622/build

• Step 3 – compile openal

  This will also be done 2 different ways depending on if your on 32bit or 64bit ubuntu first we show 32bit:

  # cmake ..
  For 64bit version you have to do this:
  # CFLAGS=-m32 LDFLAGS=-m32 cmake .. -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr -DLIB_SUFFIX=32
  If you see something like so then it compiled in pulseaudio support:
  – Building OpenAL with support for the following backends:
  –      ALSA, OSS, PulseAudio, WaveFile
  Then we compile(both 32bit and 64bit)
  # make

• Step 4 – back up the old libopenal and copy the new one

  First we need to back up the old libopenal.so.1 just encase this one is messed up. I know, I know it didnt work anyways but still always backing up is a good practice

  # mv /path/to/your/secondlife/lib/libopenal.so.1 /path/to/your/secondlife/lib/libopenal.so.1.old
  Then we copy the new one over like so:
  # cp libopenal.so.1.10.622 /path/to/your/secondlife/lib/libopenal.so.1

• Step 5 – making sure openal knows to use pulse as its audio source

  Now because openal defaults to alsa which pulse has a buggy plugin for we must override that with the user config file. The following command assumes you have nothing in the .alsoftrc yet because you really havent messed with it. If you have a .alsoftrc and have settings in it just simply set the drivers to pulse and now anything you may already have using openal will use pulse The only warning I have for this is that if you have other programs that come bundled with libopenal.1 may not have the newest version that supports pulse but you should be able to do the same for that program as you did with secondlife. If it breaks anything just change it back and look for another route or ask the providers of the other software too provide an update.

  # echo “drivers=pulse” > ~/.alsoftrc

Now you should have sound for secondlife You might want to restart your computer to make sure no sort of caching is going on. Remember this does not fix sound for streaming media I am still working on that. I will post and link from this one to the streaming media fix if/when I get one firgured out.

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