Hyper-V Ubuntu Guest VM has no audio output despite claims to the opposite in official Microsoft Docs

Question

According to the Microsoft Docs, sharing an audio device from a Ubuntu Guest to a Windows host using XRDP is relatively trivial and in fact enabled by default.

I have set up a Ubuntu 22.04 VM using the Hyper-V Quick Create tool, and keeping all the defaults. I verified that I was in "Enhanced Session" mode. I also verified that the settings were identical to the below screenshot as shown in one of the links above:

I log in to the Guest VM using XRDP. When I play a Youtube video, I hear nothing. I checked the VM settings and all I see is "Dummy Output".

I've seen some blog pages and answers on here which propose all manner of workarounds and hacks:

• https://www.nakivo.com/blog/install-ubuntu-20-04-on-hyper-v-with-enhanced-session/
• https://techbloggingfool.com/2020/12/26/deploy-a-linux-vm-on-hyper-v-with-sound-20-04-edition/
• No Sound on Ubuntu in Hyper-V

But these answers are hardly satisfactory, since the audio output should be configured using XRDP and by default according to the official docs.

Either the Windows Docs are incorrect (highly unlikely in my opinion), or I am overlooking some critical setting here. Which one is it?

Answer 1

As far as I know, the sound redirection feature is not available out of the box when using xRDP. You have to compile the sound redirection module in order to get sound redirection working when performing remote desktop connection against Ubuntu machines.

After installing xRDP on your Ubuntu (and we assume that you have Ubuntu 22.04.x), you will need to perform the following from a console

sudo apt install build-essential dpkg-dev libpulse-dev git autoconf libtool
cd ~
git clone https://github.com/neutrinolabs/pulseaudio-module-xrdp.git
cd ~/pulseaudio-module-xrdp
scripts/install_pulseaudio_sources_apt_wrapper.sh
./bootstrap && ./configure PULSE_DIR=~/pulseaudio.src
make
sudo make install
ls $(pkg-config --variable=modlibexecdir libpulse) | grep xrdp

Reboot your VM. Check the Sound Device in Ubuntu and you should see xrdp-sink device specified as input and output....

If you are interested in getting more inforation, you can visit our blog where you can find more information about sound redirection and xrdp check these links xRDP – xRDP Sound Redirection on Ubuntu or Debian – The New Way

Hope this help Till next time