System wide pipewire with openrc

[mazes80]

Required packages

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emerge -C media-sound/jack-audio-connection-kit
USE="extra jack-sdk pipewire-alsa" emerge media-video/pipewire # extra is not mandatory
emerge acct-group/pipewire acct-user/pipewire

New files

/etc/init.d/pipewire

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#!/sbin/openrc-run
# Copyright 2022 Gentoo Authors
# Distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License v2

PIPEWIRE_RUNTIME_DIR="/tmp/pipewire"
name="pipewire daemon"
description="Share sound and videos"
command=/usr/bin/pipewire
command_args="${pipewire_args}"
command_background=yes
command_user="pipewire:pipewire"
pidfile="${PIPEWIRE_RUNTIME_DIR}/pipewire.pid"

depend() {
        use alsasound pulseaudio
}

start_pre() {
       # The next 5 lines feels like it should be replaced by:
       # checkpath -d -m 2775 -o "${command_user}" "${PIPEWIRE_RUNTIME_DIR}"
       # Optionally replace -d with -D to clean out the directory (possible security thoughts)
        if [[ ! -e ${PIPEWIRE_RUNTIME_DIR} ]]; then
                mkdir ${PIPEWIRE_RUNTIME_DIR}
        fi
        chmod -R g+ws ${PIPEWIRE_RUNTIME_DIR}
        chown -R pipewire:pipewire ${PIPEWIRE_RUNTIME_DIR}
        export PIPEWIRE_RUNTIME_DIR
}

start_post() {
        einfo "Wait for the pipewire socket to be ready"
        sleep 3
        find ${PIPEWIRE_RUNTIME_DIR} -type s -exec chmod g+w '{}' ';'
        einfo "Socket file: $(find ${PIPEWIRE_RUNTIME_DIR} -type s)"
}

Thanks grknight for the review

/etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc.d/99-pipewire

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#!/bin/bash

if test -z "${XDG_RUNTIME_DIR}"; then
        export XDG_RUNTIME_DIR="$(mktemp -d /tmp/$(id -u)-runtime-dir.XXX)"
else
        export XDG_RUNTIME_DIR="${XDG_RUNTIME_DIR}"
fi
export PIPEWIRE_RUNTIME_DIR="/tmp/pipewire"

Tweaked files

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mkdir /etc/pipewire
cp /usr/share/pipewire/pipewire.conf /etc/pipewire/
sed -i '/path.*pipewire-media-session/{s/#//;s/pipewire-media-session/wireplumber/}'

Disable D-Bus

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sed -i '/with-logind/s/true/false/'           /etc/wireplumber/bluetooth.lua.d/50-bluez-config.lua
sed -i '/alsa.reserve/s/true/false/'          /etc/wireplumber/main.lua.d/50-alsa-config.lua
sed -i '/enable-flatpak-portal/s/true/false/' /etc/wireplumber/main.lua.d/50-default-access-config.lua

System settings

Start pipewire at boot

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rc-update add pipewire default

Add all user who can use sound to pipewire group

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usermod -a -G pipewire user1
usermod -a -G pipewire user2
usermod -a -G pipewire mpd

Extra step
You may also need to add to your .bashrc

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export PIPEWIRE_RUNTIME_DIR="/tmp/pipewire"

Restart your graphical sessions (wayland not covered here)

MPD
Set output as this in /etc/mpd.conf

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audio_output {
        type            "pipewire"
        name            "pipewire-0"
}

/etc/conf.d/mpd

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export PIPEWIRE_RUNTIME_DIR="/tmp/pipewire"

[grknight]

I don't know if it is right or not, but this file should be modernized a bit:
/etc/init.d/pipewire

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#!/sbin/openrc-run
# Copyright 2022 Gentoo Authors
# Distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License v2

PIPEWIRE_RUNTIME_DIR="/tmp/pipewire"
name="pipewire daemon"
description="Share sound and videos"
command=/usr/bin/pipewire
command_args="${pipewire_args}"
command_background=yes
command_user="pipewire:pipewire"
pidfile="${PIPEWIRE_RUNTIME_DIR}/pipewire.pid"

depend() {
        use alsasound pulseaudio
}

start_pre() {
       # The next 5 lines feels like it should be replaced by:
       # checkpath -d -m 2775 -o "${command_user}" "${PIPEWIRE_RUNTIME_DIR}"
       # Optionally replace -d with -D to clean out the directory (possible security thoughts)
        if [[ ! -e ${PIPEWIRE_RUNTIME_DIR} ]]; then
                mkdir ${PIPEWIRE_RUNTIME_DIR}
        fi
        chmod -R g+ws ${PIPEWIRE_RUNTIME_DIR}
        chown -R pipewire:pipewire ${PIPEWIRE_RUNTIME_DIR}
        export PIPEWIRE_RUNTIME_DIR
}

start_post() {
        einfo "Wait for the pipewire socket to be ready"
        sleep 3
        find ${PIPEWIRE_RUNTIME_DIR} -type s -exec chmod g+w '{}' ';'
        einfo "Socket file: $(find ${PIPEWIRE_RUNTIME_DIR} -type s)"
}

[acidrums4]

Add all user who can use sound to pipewire group

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usermod -a -G user1
usermod -a -G user2
usermod -a -G mpd

Not sure if it's worth noting that when issuing these commands, the pipewire group should precede the usernames, something like

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usermod -a -G pipewire mpd

That will add mpd user to the pipewire group.

However, this was the only thing that let me use mpd as its own user with pipewire. Thank you so much!

[L29Ah]

Any plans on adding this to the media-video/pipewire ebuild (perhaps behind an USE flag)?

[Ralphred]

Known issues: qjackctl will refuse to run for multiple users at the same time as the socket name seems hardcoded

qjackctl does that with a system wide jackd too, I wouldn't consider it an exclusive pipewire issue. Are you exporting JACK_PROMISCUOUS_SERVER?

[mazes80]

Known issues: qjackctl will refuse to run for multiple users at the same time as the socket name seems hardcoded

qjackctl does that with a system wide jackd too, I wouldn't consider it an exclusive pipewire issue. Are you exporting JACK_PROMISCUOUS_SERVER?

qjackctl and qpwgraph created one socket named: /tmp/software@hostname, if you tried to launch it in another session an error was thrown as socket already existed.
I submitted one PR that changed the socket name to /tmp/user:software@hostname, so every user can launch 1 instance of those softwares.

[mwhitlock]

I didn't need media-sound/jack-audio-connection-kit. It was sufficient to install media-video/pipewire, media-video/wireplumber, and acct-user/pipewire.

I cleaned up the init scripts to remove some extraneous cruft, to move the runtime dir beneath /run, and to allow the user:group to be overridden…

/etc/init.d/pipewire

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#!/sbin/openrc-run

: ${PIPEWIRE_RUNTIME_DIR:=/run/pipewire}
export PIPEWIRE_RUNTIME_DIR

name="PipeWire daemon"
description="Facilitates sharing of multimedia content between devices and applications"
command="/usr/bin/pipewire"
command_background="true"
command_user="${PIPEWIRE_USER:-pipewire}:${PIPEWIRE_GROUP:-pipewire}"
directory="${PIPEWIRE_RUNTIME_DIR}"
pidfile="${PIPEWIRE_RUNTIME_DIR}/${RC_SVCNAME}.pid"
umask="0002"

start_pre() {
	checkpath -d -m0750 -o "${command_user}" -- "${PIPEWIRE_RUNTIME_DIR}"
}

/etc/init.d/wireplumber

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#!/sbin/openrc-run

: ${PIPEWIRE_RUNTIME_DIR:=/run/pipewire}
export PIPEWIRE_RUNTIME_DIR

: ${XDG_STATE_HOME:=${PIPEWIRE_RUNTIME_DIR}/state}
export XDG_STATE_HOME

name="WirePlumber session manager"
description="Session and policy manager for PipeWire"
command="/usr/bin/wireplumber"
command_background="true"
command_user="${PIPEWIRE_USER:-pipewire}:${PIPEWIRE_GROUP:-pipewire}"
directory="${PIPEWIRE_RUNTIME_DIR}"
pidfile="${PIPEWIRE_RUNTIME_DIR}/${RC_SVCNAME}.pid"

depend() {
	need pipewire
	use dev-settle
	after alsasound modules
}

You probably won't need this, but on my Raspberry Pi 1, I also needed to increase the default clock quantum to avoid sporadic audio glitches:

/etc/pipewire/pipewire.conf.d/local.conf

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context.properties = {
	default.clock.quantum = 2048
}

Note: I did not need to set PIPEWIRE_RUNTIME_DIR in my user profile, as MPV's pipewire audio output module apparently finds the system-wide PipeWire socket just fine without being told explicitly where to look for it. Presumably the same would be true for any client using the PipeWire client library, but YMMV.

[L29Ah]

Note: I did not need to set PIPEWIRE_RUNTIME_DIR in my user profile, as MPV's pipewire audio output module apparently finds the system-wide PipeWire socket just fine without being told explicitly where to look for it. Presumably the same would be true for any client using the PipeWire client library, but YMMV.

Thanks for your work. Do i get it right you didn't need any adjustments for the default configuration of PipeWire itself?
Do ALSA and PulseAudio frontends of PipeWire work for the users in your setup?

[mwhitlock]

Do i get it right you didn't need any adjustments for the default configuration of PipeWire itself?

The only thing I changed about PipeWire's configuration was to increase the default clock quantum. Everything else is just as Portage installed it. I did add the pipewire and wireplumber services to my default runlevel, and I added my user to the pipewire group.

Do ALSA and PulseAudio frontends of PipeWire work for the users in your setup?

I don't know. I am running this on a headless Raspberry Pi in my home theater rack, which is why I couldn't use PipeWire in the usual way — I don't start any desktop session, and there is no D-Bus (system or session) and no elogind. I can say that it works great for running MPV from the command line in SSH, just had to set ao=pipewire.

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[ao] Trying audio driver 'pipewire'
[ao/pipewire] requested format: 44100 Hz, stereo channels, s16p
[ao/pipewire] Headers version: 1.2.6
[ao/pipewire] Library version: 1.2.6
[ao/pipewire] Core user: pipewire
[ao/pipewire] Core host: hifipi
[ao/pipewire] Core version: 1.2.6
[ao/pipewire] Core name: pipewire-0
[ao/pipewire] using soft-buffer of 132300 samples.
AO: [pipewire] 44100Hz stereo 2ch s16p
[cplayer] AO: Description: PipeWire audio output

The only real reason I'm trying out PipeWire at all is that my stupid AV preprocessor fades in the audio after even the briefest moment of digital silence in the HDMI audio stream, and that causes the beginning of every music track to fade in and even causes some drop-outs in the middle of some tracks that contain digital silence. There's supposed to be a way to make PipeWire constantly output an inaudible noise to trick such stupid receivers into staying locked on the PCM clock. I haven't gotten that far yet, though.

[szatox]

I've been using pipewire for a while, and although I was mostly happy with it, I did miss my system-wide sound.
Gotta say, good job figuring out how to fix it. Thanks!

Moving from a working single-user pipewire to system-wide took adding init scripts for pipewire and wireplumber and removing gentoo-pipewire-launcher from xdg's autostart.
That's it, no other configuration changes, no sourcing variables into user session etc.
Just set pipewire runtime dir and umask for sockets to be created under /run/pipewire and with with g+rw permissions (I used umask="07"). I'm not sure how do applications know where to look for sockets, but they do find them just fine.
I don't use pulseaudio, so I skipped setting up the proxy completely.

Results:
* my audio works (using either ALSA or JACK)
* mpd launched as mpd:pipewire works (ALSA output with all optional parameters skipped)
* applications launched as a restricted user with pipewire group work (I'm pretty sure firefox uses alsa, mpv connected using jack), though I had to remove it from audio group to prevent direct access to hardware which conflicted with pipewire
* easyeffects work
* applications using portaudio work (they don't have descriptive names in patchbay, but the sound works)
* Bonus: bluetooth speaker works. There is no need to remove related configs.

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media-video/pipewire-1.2.7-r1::gentoo was built with the following:
USE="X bluetooth dbus elogind extra ffmpeg jack-sdk lv2 modemmanager readline sound-server ssl v4l zeroconf -doc -echo-cancel -flatpak -gsettings -gstreamer -ieee1394 -jack-client -liblc3 -man -pipewire-alsa -roc (-selinux) (-system-service) -systemd -test"

[pietinger]

Moved from Multimedia to Documentation, Tips & Tricks.

[szatox]

Update time!
I revisited this topic in an attempt to fix wireplumber's goldfish memory problem (it just wouldn't store any session information), and came up with an improved version. This post should be enough for anyone interested to try it. Enjoy!

Apparently, wireplumber requires a valid HOME for its persistence.
Also, somewhere in the meantime bluetooth speaker stopped working with my previous configuration. I hardly ever use it, so I don't know when or why it broke, but I've got a workaround for that too. Perhaps someone could figure out an actual solution. My guess is it has something to do with dbus, but I'm not going to investigate further for now.
As a side note, I cleaned up a little bit, since some things included in earlier scripts turned out to be redundant.

============================================================================================
The base setup:
emerge acct-user/pipewire acct-group/pipewire media-video/pipewire media-video/wireplumber
Make sure your user is a member of pipewire group

create init script /etc/init.d/pipewire

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#!/sbin/openrc-run

PIPEWIRE_RUNTIME_DIR="/run/pipewire"
name="pipewire daemon"
description=""
command=/usr/bin/pipewire
command_args="${pipewire_args}"
command_background=yes
command_user="pipewire:pipewire"
pidfile="${PIPEWIRE_RUNTIME_DIR}/${RC_SVCNAME}.pid"
umask="0007"

export PIPEWIRE_RUNTIME_DIR

depend() {
	# Even though wireplumber controls volume levels, something must unmute your devices first.
	# AFAIR "use" should be enough to start the service as a dependency, but somehow it is not.
	need alsasound
}

start_pre() {
	mkdir -p   "${PIPEWIRE_RUNTIME_DIR}"
	chown -R pipewire:pipewire "${PIPEWIRE_RUNTIME_DIR}"
}

Create init script /etc/init.d/wireplumber

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#!/sbin/openrc-run

PIPEWIRE_RUNTIME_DIR="/run/pipewire"
name="wireplumber daemon"
description=""
command=/usr/bin/wireplumber
command_args="${wireplumber_args}"
command_background="true"
command_user="${PIPEWIRE_USER:-pipewire}:${PIPEWIRE_GROUP:-pipewire}"
directory="${PIPEWIRE_RUNTIME_DIR}"

pidfile="${PIPEWIRE_RUNTIME_DIR}/${RC_SVCNAME}.pid"

depend() {
   need pipewire
}

Options:
1) Persistence + bluetooth workaround for a single-user system
echo PIPEWIRE_USER=<your username> > /etc/conf.d/wireplumber

2) Persistence on a multiuser system, without bluetooth
copy acct-user/pipewire/pipewire-1-r2.ebuild to your local overlay
change ACCT_USER_HOME from /dev/null to /var/lib/pipewire
re-emerge acct-user/pipewire, using the one from local overlay

3) Persistence + bluetooth on a multiuser system
Instead of starting wireplumber as a service, just launch it from within your session after you login.