[PVE 8.1] QEMU VM Fails to Start when SPICE-Backed Audio Device ich-intel-hda Added

[SInisterPisces]

@aaron asked me to post this as a separate thread.

With the latest version of Proxmox, I am unable to start a VM with the SPICE-driver-based ich-intel-hda audio device added, which is necessary for SPICE-based audio.

Please let me know if you need any additional logs or other command results.

Proxmox version:

root@andromeda0:~# pveversion
pve-manager/8.1.3/b46aac3b42da5d15 (running kernel: 6.5.11-4-pve)

Here's the VM config:

root@andromeda0:~# qm config 10999
agent: 1
audio0: device=ich9-intel-hda,driver=spice
bios: ovmf
boot: order=scsi0;net0
cores: 4
cpu: host
efidisk0: vmDisks64k:vm-10999-disk-0,efitype=4m,pre-enrolled-keys=1,size=1M
machine: q35
memory: 8196
meta: creation-qemu=8.1.2,ctime=1700852613
name: dragon-radio
net0: virtio=56:ea:3c:a8:06:97,bridge=vmbr0,firewall=1,tag=20
numa: 0
ostype: l26
rng0: source=/dev/urandom
scsi0: vmDisks64k:vm-10999-disk-1,discard=on,iothread=1,size=64G,ssd=1
scsihw: virtio-scsi-single
smbios1: uuid=576fe418-24c5-4def-853d-327009750397
sockets: 1
usb0: host=1df7:3030
vmgenid: 6ac9e20e-f492-4da9-b83c-28381f4766c2

I've confirmed it starts just fine when the audio0 driver is set to NONE.

 

[leesteken]

I've seen a report of this issue before. I use intel-hda instead and that still works; maybe you can use that as a work-around until this is fixed?

 

[SInisterPisces]

I've seen a report of this issue before. I use intel-hda instead and that still works; maybe you can use that as a work-around until this is fixed?

I'll do that.

As it is, I don't really NEED this right now. I just noticed it was broken.

Spice audio is too laggy/compressed/lossy/something bad to use with my software defined radio tools, unfortunately. If there's an option to run it uncompressed/lossless, I haven't found it.

But enabling it definitely shouldn't crash the VM, so I wanted to report the bug.

EDIT: I've confirmed that the intel-hda driver doesn't work either.

 

[aaron]

Recreating a VM with a similar config does result in the same issue.

Past @leesteken does have the answer ;-) https://forum.proxmox.com/threads/audio-could-not-init-spice-audio-driver.125589/#post-547761

@SInisterPisces did it ever work with exactly this setting? Because you need to set the display to "Spice".
If it did, then it is possible that Qemu changed the default behavior to an error if there is no spice audio possible, due to the display being set to something else. Once the display is set to Spice, all the necessary devices are created for the VM.

Maybe a hint in the GUI would be good to make it clear, that the display must be set to one of the Spice options.

 

[SInisterPisces]

Recreating a VM with a similar config does result in the same issue.

Past @leesteken does have the answer ;-) https://forum.proxmox.com/threads/audio-could-not-init-spice-audio-driver.125589/#post-547761

@SInisterPisces did it ever work with exactly this setting? Because you need to set the display to "Spice".
If it did, then it is possible that Qemu changed the default behavior to an error if there is no spice audio possible, due to the display being set to something else. Once the display is set to Spice, all the necessary devices are created for the VM.

Maybe a hint in the GUI would be good to make it clear, that the display must be set to one of the Spice options.

Thanks!

I didn't have the display set to SPICE when I tried this; and now that I've read your reply, I do remember running into this exact issue back in early Proxmox 7 days trying to mix SPICE audio with non-SPICE video because I didn't know what I was doing.

I had to dismantle my virtualization server for several months, and I must have forgotten. Thanks for your help.

A hint in the GUI would be great; this is the sort of thing that makes perfect sense once you know it, but is a bit obscure when you're learning everything from scratch. SPICE has a lot more moving parts than I first realized when I started using it.

Would it be possible to display the hint as a warning whenever a SPICE audio device is present but the video is any non-SPICE thing?