Test of pipewire with sound

[fredx181]

My latest release of QuickPup64 has full pipewire support, it uses pipewire on root instead of separate pipewire process, I just share pipewire via TCP (pulseaudio port was blocked on firewall) and modify the run-as-spot script. To manage pipewire routes, use helvum
....
....

Thanks, as I said earlier, problem with run-as-spot (to run pipewire) on KLV (and on my DebianDog Bookworm too):

Problem is that when running as root and then logout, then the pipewire and pipewire-pulse processes are still running (don't know why ), so need to be killed IMO when logging in as another user.

When logout or exit X from root desktop, the pipewire and pipewire-pulse processes hang, which shouldn't IMO.
This is not the case on BookwormPup64 (and probably not on any other traditional puppy), perhaps su is different (or different configuration?)

But found that a small edit in run-as-spot fixes it for me, by changing exec su ${XUSER} -s /bin/ash -c ' to exec su ${XUSER} --session-command /bin/ash -c '
edit: or using bash: exec su ${XUSER} --session-command /bin/bash -c '
Then the pipewire processes won't hang. So probably I'll go with that, unless someone says that it's terribly insecure
edit: read about it here https://serverfault.com/questions/59967 ... on-command but cannot really understand if --session-command will be insecure in this case of running pipewire.

[fredx181]

Re-uploaded 20pipewire.sfs , download at first post
Should work also now from spot and weedog Desktop (without the need of using sudo in scripts (as did previously and as I said, didn't like it).
This "odd" method of running pipewire supports sound when running an app as spot from root Desktop and is different from the official Void recommendation https://docs.voidlinux.org/config/media/pipewire.html
I tested that Void method and as I suspected..., no sound with "run-as-spot <application>"

Contains in /usr/local/bin :
- pipewire-root.sh (/root/.xinitrc runs it at root login) will run-as-spot pipewire, sound works for root and for when run-as-spot <application> from root desktop login
- pipewire-user.sh (/home/spot/.xinitrc and /home/weedog/.xinitrc runs it at login), this is for to run with any normal user
- run-as-spot modified (see previous post about it)
EDIT: Forget about what I posted here: https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic. ... 575#p98575 , the latest 20pipewire.sfs should have all included.

[fredx181]

@rockedge perhaps not needed to say, but for info anyway: If you decide after some testing to include this pipewire setup in new iso release just include in the rootfs:
- from 20pipewire.sfs, only: /etc, /home, /root and /usr/local/bin/
- from xbps install: pipewire, alsa-pipewire, wireplumber (to have officially installed)

[rockedge]

@fredx181 the latest 20pipewire.sfs is not working correctly on a bare metal machine. No connection to pavucontrol in either root or spot. The audio comes on but no volume controls and pactl info shows no connection.

The first 20pipewire.sfs worked okay and better than the second version. I am not sure what is going wrong yet.

[wiak]

@fredx181 the latest 20pipewire.sfs is not working correctly on a bare metal machine. No connection to pavucontrol in either root or spot. The audio comes on but no volume controls and pactl info shows no connection.

The first 20pipewire.sfs worked okay and better than the second version. I am not sure what is going wrong yet.

I just tried the 20pipewire.sfs I previously download with KLV-Airedale latest I think. Worked fine for me, but not sure what version I have. It's:

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md5sum 20pipewire.sfs 
3c94055eef6d0238119934111fe60c36  20pipewire.sfs

However I was actually trying it out for a different reason. In my pipewire installation experiment with KLV_sway I was getting a strange lockout of my system. Result is however that I can get same lockout situation in KLV-Airedale, but same whether using pulseaudio or using new pipewire (that's a relief really, but also the lockout unlikely to occur in KLV-Airedale in normal usage). To get the lockout you simply do the following: run a youtube video (so with sound). Then open a terminal and enter:

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reboot -f

Generally not a good idea using the above...

Result of that is you get the dreaded uninterruptible process... big D in the ps aux STAT column. The reboot -f process is there but you can't in this D state kill it with the usual kill -9 signal, even if you are root user. The system keeps working okay, but you simply can't properly shutdown or reboot - you need to hold the power button... Most annoying in my KLV_sway experiments since I was using reboot -f as quick exit mechanism. I'm wondering if KLA_OT2baseCE would lock up if trying its usual shutdown whilst youtube running? Depends what Sofiya has in there to shutdown now (I used to you reboot -f variation). I'll try 'shutdown' to see if I can arrange to bring the system down in a more controlled way... (I don't off the top of my head know the runit equivalent of systemctl reboot)

EDIT: Okay, so this method controls things (lets runit close processes first) and works fine:

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shutdown -r now

Otherwise pipewire sfs is going fine for me (above version) with KLV-AIredale, and also my quickly documented (per Void docs) pipewire normal install in KLV_sway build I'm playing with. Not sure what to do to avoid the lockdown (other than not using youtube... or having active pavucontrol for that matter whilst trying to reboot...
Nasty little situation that D type uninterruptible process - I've seem people asking what's wrong sometimes when they can't manage to kill a process - answer is that the process in question may well be an uninterruptible one such as here...

[fredx181]

@fredx181 the latest 20pipewire.sfs is not working correctly on a bare metal machine. No connection to pavucontrol in either root or spot. The audio comes on but no volume controls and pactl info shows no connection.

The first 20pipewire.sfs worked okay and better than the second version. I am not sure what is going wrong yet.

Probably it's because I tested on sr3, on sr5 now and got "dummy output" on pavucontrol, you did too. ?
Could be that the files in the sfs conflict with newer libpipewire in sr5 (learned now that sharing bins and libs in sfs can be tricky with a rolling release as Void is).
So, did different, works for me on sr5, attached new 20pipewire.sfs containing only the custom scripts and conf files (very small now), so load it at boot and:
xbps-install -Su pipewire wireplumber-elogind (will install wireplumber too) and logout and back in. (edit: pulseaudio must be inactive)

EDIT LATER: New 20pipewire.sfs attached, turns out that without the conf files in /etc it works OK.

20pipewire.sfs

(4 KiB) Downloaded 105 times

reboot -f
.....

That's bad, happens for me too on KLV-Airedale (while running youtube video) but worse than for you, it seems, complete freeze for me, hard shutdown required.
Tested on my Debian Bookworm too (with pipewire running) and same happens.
EDIT: Do I understand that you got the same crash when using plain pulseaudio ?
Btw, the 20pipewire.sfs you tried was older version, probably the one containing sudo in /usr/local/bin/pipewire-spot.sh, which I didn't like after all.

[wiak]

EDIT: Do I understand that you got the same crash when using plain pulseaudio ?

It was a quick test also with pulseaudio only, and seemed I got same freeze. I'm not surprised though since reboot -f is forcing reboot without cleaning up processes and looks like pipewire (or pulseaudio) needs cleaned up via shutdown -r now type command instead. The problem may be related to something involved being an suid executable - I can't remember why I'm saying that, but I recall reading something somewhere along these lines..., but could be mistaken and not remembering correctly.

[fredx181]

No crashing for me if I just do reboot (while playing youtube) (can't see what's the use of -f (force) is good for, btw)
-----------------------------------------------
EDIT: Did some more pipewire testing and it seems that wireplumber-elogind is also required to install (without it I still got sometimes the 'dummy output', and I noticed that without, there's a complaint about missing it when running pipewire,wireplumber manually from terminal).
So then do, additional to loading latest 20pipewire.sfs: xbps-install -Su pipewire alsa-pipewire wireplumber-elogind edit: see next post and it should be ok, if not, I'll eat my hat
(edit: no, next is then to discover if there's perhaps a timing issue, always difficult to find out though).

EDIT: More testing. Still it's a hit and miss thing, get the annoying "dummy output" in pavucontrol sometimes , seems to matter if you shutdown or reboot, now experimenting with the most basic setup from the beginning without the conf files in /etc , seems to work ok, get back later (oh ... I'm too much obsessed by this, need to take a break soon... ).

[fredx181]

The first 20pipewire.sfs worked okay and better than the second version

Thanks. It appears you had a point, the first had no conf files in /etc and turns out that these (in later version) were conflicting somehow, without it should work OK.
New 20pipewire.sfs attachment (removed /etc) and edited info here: https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic. ... 873#p98873
Just needed (additional to loading the sfs at boot): xbps-install -Su pipewire wireplumber-elogind (edited: better install wireplumber-elogind too)

[Sofiya]

Honestly I like Pipewire, BUT I also like PulseAudio Equalizer. Which unfortunately will not work with Pipewire, so I remain a fan of Pulseaudio

[rockedge]

On some machines pulseaudio works well so not going to change those to pipewire.

The Dell Optiplex 990 I have is running KLV-Airedale-RT with @fredx181 's 20pipewire.sfs and suggested packages installed for pipewire and this machine really likes the setup so far.

Looks good so far on several different systems. Thanks fredx181 once again for the next step

[wiak]

On some machines pulseaudio works well so not going to change those to pipewire.

I agree. For the moment it doesn't matter, but soon pulseaudio will likely vanish so good to be prepared specially since pipewire is for video too.

I find both Wayland and Pipewire pretty exciting compared to established methods. Puppy forum overall was very late coming to the pulseaudio party, but let's not be too slow adopting pipewire would be good overall.

I see its primary creator was also co-creator of GStreamer.

Arch Wiki:

It aims to offer capture and playback for both audio and video with minimal latency and support for PulseAudio, JACK, ALSA and GStreamer-based applications.
The daemon based on the framework can be configured to be both an audio server (with PulseAudio and JACK features) and a video capture server.
PipeWire also supports containers like Flatpak and does not rely on the audio and video user groups. Instead, it uses a Polkit-like security model, asking Flatpak or Wayland for permission to record screen or audio.

https://docs.pipewire.org/

https://docs.pipewire.org/page_overview.html

Linux has no unified framework for exchanging multimedia content between applications or even devices. In most cases, developers realized that a user-space daemon is needed to make this possible:

For video content, we typically rely on the compositor to render our data.
For video capture, we usually go directly to the hardware devices, with all security implications and inflexible routing that this brings.
For consumer audio, we use PulseAudio to manage and mix multiple streams from clients.
For Pro audio, we use JACK to manage the graph of nodes.
None of these solutions (except perhaps to some extent Wayland) however were designed to support the security features that are required when dealing with flatpaks or other containerized applications. PipeWire aims to solve this problem and provides a unified framework to run both consumer and pro audio as well as video capture and processing in a secure way.

https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/pipewire/pipewire

Some applications use the native PipeWire API, such as most compositors (gnome-shell, wayland, ...) to implement screen sharing. These apps will just work automatically.
Most audio applications can use either ALSA, JACK or PulseAudio as a backend. PipeWire provides support for all 3 backends. Depending on how
your distribution has configured things this should just work automatically or with the provided scripts shown below.
...
Running JACK applications
Depending on how the system was configured, you can either run PipeWire and
JACK side-by-side or have PipeWire take over the functionality of JACK
completely.
...
If you replaced JACK with PipeWire completely, pw-jack does not have any
effect and can be omitted.

...Running PulseAudio applications
PipeWire can run a PulseAudio compatible replacement server. You can'tuse both servers at the same time. Usually your package manager will
make the server conflict so that you can only install one or the other.
PulseAudio applications still use the regular PulseAudio client libraries and you don't need to do anything else than change the server implementation. A successful swap of the server can be verified by checking the output of

pactl info

It should include the string: Server Name: PulseAudio (on PipeWire 0.3.x)
...
You can use pavucontrol to change profiles and ports, change volumes or redirect streams, just like with PulseAudio.

Running ALSA applications
If the PipeWire alsa module is installed, it can be seen with

$ aplay -L

ALSA applications can then use the pipewire: device to use PipeWire as the audio system.

For Jack, also refer to: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/pipewire/helvum

[geo_c]

Running JACK applications
Depending on how the system was configured, you can either run PipeWire and
JACK side-by-side or have PipeWire take over the functionality of JACK
completely.
...
If you replaced JACK with PipeWire completely, pw-jack does not have any
effect and can be omitted.

...Running PulseAudio applications
PipeWire can run a PulseAudio compatible replacement server. You can'tuse both servers at the same time. Usually your package manager will
make the server conflict so that you can only install one or the other.
PulseAudio applications still use the regular PulseAudio client libraries and you don't need to do anything else than change the server implementation. A successful swap of the server can be verified by checking the output of

pactl info

It should include the string: Server Name: PulseAudio (on PipeWire 0.3.x)
...
You can use pavucontrol to change profiles and ports, change volumes or redirect streams, just like with PulseAudio.

Running ALSA applications
If the PipeWire alsa module is installed, it can be seen with

$ aplay -L

ALSA applications can then use the pipewire: device to use PipeWire as the audio system.

Good info.

For Jack, also refer to: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/pipewire/helvum

That's what I'm looking for right there.

[wiak]

Honestly I like Pipewire, BUT I also like PulseAudio Equalizer. Which unfortunately will not work with Pipewire, so I remain a fan of Pulseaudio

You also probably want EasyEffects per this article: https://www.zdnet.com/article/how-to-va ... syeffects/

To be frank, at the moment pulseaudio with default setup provided by Linux Mint is giving me better sounding audio than pipewire in just made KLV_sway. I can't imagine pipewire is itself the issue (or people wouldn't use it), but clear to me that some work is required to make audio sound as good as it can... I'm no audiophile, but hopefully googling will provide some answers (EasyEffects apparently being part of that including equalizer plugin it seems).

[wiak]

Ok, I seem to have fixed quality in my pipewire KLV_sway audio, but I'm now sure what it is I've added that fixed it to provide HiFi Music profile... I'll have to re-install and check, but at least I know it can be done easily now... not in current iso release or default build yet though... Seems to be a few default alsa profiles I missed out or similar...

I did try a few of the configs from fredx181 sfs in my xbps install of pipewire and that seemed to help, but don't know what helped... Since this more to do with my current KL_sway pipewire release I'll move further comments about that to its thread.

[Sofiya]

EasyEffects for Pipewire

[fredx181]

EasyEffects for Pipewire

Wow, looks great Sofiya ! You got it working on which OS ?

[Sofiya]

EasyEffects for Pipewire

Wow, looks great Sofiya ! You got it working on which OS ?

Bookworm Pup64

[fredx181]

EasyEffects for Pipewire

Wow, looks great Sofiya ! You got it working on which OS ?

Bookworm Pup64

Ah, you think it can be done on KLV ? (read some about it and seems rather complicated to setup)

[Sofiya]

Wow, looks great Sofiya ! You got it working on which OS ?

Bookworm Pup64

Ah, you think it can be done on KLV ? (read some about it and seems rather complicated to setup)

it is not installed on Bookworm Pup64, I installed it myself sudo apt-get install easyeffects lsp-plugins-lv2
possible on KLV

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xbps-install -Su easyeffects

[fredx181]

Bookworm Pup64

Ah, you think it can be done on KLV ? (read some about it and seems rather complicated to setup)

it is not installed on Bookworm Pup64, I installed it myself sudo apt-get install easyeffects
possible on KLV

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xbps-install -Su easyeffects

That was rather easy, needed also Linux Studio Plugins, followed answer from here https://www.reddit.com/r/voidlinux/comm ... t/gopqaj8/
Downloaded from sourceforge https://sourceforge.net/projects/lsp-pl ... z/download ,create ~/.lv2 directory and copy from extracted Linux-x86_64/lsp-plugins-lv2-1.1.29-Linux-x86_64.tar.gz usr/local/lib/lv2 to ~/.lv2 and plugins e.g. equalizer is available on KLV.
EDIT: Or better as @Sofiya wrote (further on this page) xbps-install -Su lsp-plugins (Linux Studio Plugins)

[fredx181]

I did try a few of the configs from fredx181 sfs in my xbps install of pipewire and that seemed to help, but don't know what helped

The earlier 20pipewire.sfs that I shared had /etc with config files inside, sometimes I got 'dummy output' in pavucontrol (annoying, seemed random) in the latest sfs /etc is left out and without I get no 'dummy output' anymore, I guess (not sure) that these conf files conflict with the setup (run-as-spot pipewire that I took from BookwormPup), but on your KLV_sway it may be different.
I'm not audiophile too (and I'm not 18 anymore ), sound is as good as with Pulseaudio for me.

[Sofiya]

Ah, you think it can be done on KLV ? (read some about it and seems rather complicated to setup)

it is not installed on Bookworm Pup64, I installed it myself sudo apt-get install easyeffects
possible on KLV

Code: Select all

xbps-install -Su easyeffects

That was rather easy, needed also Linux Studio Plugins, followed answer from here https://www.reddit.com/r/voidlinux/comm ... t/gopqaj8/
Downloaded from sourceforge https://sourceforge.net/projects/lsp-pl ... z/download ,create ~/.lv2 directory and copy from extracted Linux-x86_64/lsp-plugins-lv2-1.1.29-Linux-x86_64.tar.gz usr/local/lib/lv2 to ~/.lv2 and plugins e.g. equalizer is available on KLV.

KLV plugins xbps-install -Su lsp-plugins

Bookworm Pup64 is quite simple

[fredx181]

@rockedge

What's your current implementation of pipewire in KLV-airedale-RT. Is it @fredx181's sfs, or did you xbps-install it?

I used xbps-install to perform an actual installation of pipewire components and the 20pipewire.sfs is present and only contains the configuration files. The pipewire pieces are installed in the rootfs so the 20pipewire.sfs is very small containing only the parts for configuration to work in KLV-Airedale.

This way we are using the Void Linux repo packages that are the most recent stable versions with the advantage that pipewire is updated/upgraded regularly and will stay maintained

I'd like to know what you mean with 'configuration files', latest 20pipewire.sfs contains not the conf files in /etc (as I said, suspected creating conflict) , probably you mean the scripts in /usr/local/bin and the modified ~/.xinitrc ? (without the pipewire/wireplumber bins and libs in the sfs)
Well, basically curious if the latest sfs setup that I shared works ok, not only for me, but for others too.
(thought better post here as it's not about BookwormPup) .

[rockedge]

@fredx181 by configuration files I mean the .xinitrc files. I am using the latest 20pipewire.sfs with pipewire installed in the rootfs.

It works really well and I am using it right now on a Dell Optiplex 990 running KLV-Airedale-RT completely updated. Pipewire is version 3.80 at the moment. Very responsive and I installed EasyEffect and a lot of LSA plugins to experiment with. pavucontrol also works both as root and spot.

[rockedge]

@fredx181
Here's an example KLV-Airedale-RT (6.1.38-rt13) streaming a network camera with mpv, playing some electronic music on YouTube in Firefox with terminal open with the query command pactl info

Screenshot-500_2023-09-19_12-16-14.jpg (32.48 KiB) Viewed 1617 times

The red X in the tray is a switch to control wireless X10 control signals

[geo_c]

@fredx181
Here's an example KLV-Airedale-RT (6.1.38-rt13) streaming a network camera with mpv, playing some electronic music on YouTube in Firefox with terminal open with the query command pactl info

So we're talking about the sfs and instructions found here? https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic. ... 924#p98924

[rockedge]

@geo_c the file 20pipewire.sfs and instructions are here -> https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic. ... 374#p98374

Summary version: put the SFS in the frugal directory root and use xbps-install to install the pipewire packages.

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xbps-install -Su pipewire wireplumber-elogind 

or use OctoXBPS

[fredx181]

Did some more testing, instead of following the method from BookwormPup (using run-as-spot pipewire) or the official Void method, I did this from pristine KLV install and works OK:
- Not loaded 20pipewire.sfs
- Installed pipewire and wireplumber-elogind
- Made last lines of /root/.xinitrc:

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pipewire &
pipewire-pulse &
wireplumber &
/usr/local/bin/start-up &
exec xfce4-session

And sound works well, pavucontrol OK, AND also when e.g running run-as-spot firefox and play a Youtube video, sound works.
EDIT: Difference is that pipewire is running as root (with the other setup, loading 20pipewire.sfs it's running as spot, frankly, I don't know why running as spot could be an advantage )
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
EDIT2: The "per user" Void method works OK also for me, instead of the modification in /root/.xinitrc, this is how I did :

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# disable pulseaudio autostart
mv /etc/xdg/autostart/pulseaudio.desktop /etc/xdg/autostart/pulseaudio.desktop.bak

# symlink pipewire.desktop launcher in /etc/xdg/autostart/
ln -s /usr/share/applications/pipewire.desktop /etc/xdg/autostart/pipewire.desktop

# for root desktop
mkdir -p /root/.config/pipewire/pipewire.conf.d 
ln -s /usr/share/examples/wireplumber/10-wireplumber.conf /root/.config/pipewire/pipewire.conf.d/
ln -s /usr/share/examples/pipewire/20-pipewire-pulse.conf /root/.config/pipewire/pipewire.conf.d/

# for spot desktop 
mkdir -p /home/spot/.config/pipewire/pipewire.conf.d 
ln -s /usr/share/examples/wireplumber/10-wireplumber.conf /home/spot/.config/pipewire/pipewire.conf.d/
ln -s /usr/share/examples/pipewire/20-pipewire-pulse.conf /home/spot/.config/pipewire/pipewire.conf.d/

When logged in as root, pipewire is running as root (same as above with modified .xinitrc), when running e.g. run-as-spot firefox, sound works.

[dimkr]

Technically, a situation where a process that runs as spot talks to a process that runs as root can lead to privilege escalation. If the idea behind having the spot user is allowing some sensitive applications to run unprivileged, it's better to restrict applications running as spot from talking to privileged applications, in case they grant spot more privileges or have a vulnerability that allows spot to do anything as root.