Urban Terror and ALSA in Ubuntu 9.10

November 5, 2009

If you've been playing Urban Terror on Ubuntu 9.10, you may have noticed some sound problems. After a while, the game slows way down and the sound gets choppy, making it impossible to keep playing. When you try to exit the game, it will most likely freeze up on you. Here's how to fix it.

First, you'll need to kill the game. Just follow these steps:

  1. Hit CTRL+ALT+F1 to open one of your virtual terminals.
  2. Log in with your normal Ubuntu username and password.
  3. Type "pkill ioUrbanTeror" and hit ENTER. This kills the game.
  4. Now type "exit" and hit ENTER. This will log you out of the terminal.
  5. Hit CTRL+ALT+F7 to go back to your regular desktop.

The problem is that the ALSA libraries are being grumpy. The solution is to install the PulseAudio libraries instead, like this:

sudo aptitude install libsdl1.2debian-pulseaudio

After a reboot, Urban Terror should run without freezing or dropping sound.

Note that you should not remove the ALSA libraries (libsdl1.2debian-alsa); the fix should work exactly as described here.

{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }

c-x December 6, 2009 at 3:28pm

Thanks!

Reply

Ignacio December 28, 2009 at 5:39pm

Thanks! Didn’t even have to reboot.

Reply

Donny Viszneki January 12, 2010 at 10:39pm

apt-get and aptitude both tell me that removing libsdl1.2debian-alsa is a consequence of installing libsdl1.2debian-pulseaudio. That message follows:

donny@donny-desktop:~/UrbanTerror$ sudo aptitude install libsdl1.2debian-pulseaudio
Reading package lists… Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information… Done
Initializing package states… Done
Writing extended state information… Done
The following NEW packages will be installed:
libsdl1.2debian-pulseaudio
The following packages will be REMOVED:
libsdl1.2debian-alsa{a}
0 packages upgraded, 1 newly installed, 1 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 0B/211kB of archives. After unpacking 0B will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n/?]

Reply

Adam January 12, 2010 at 11:09pm

I can’t remember seeing that message when I installed the PulseAudio libs, but I guess apt knows best.

Let me know how it goes.

Reply

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