Pipewire issue: sound randomly not working

[osugi_sakae]

About a month ago, after an update, pipewire started not working after a random amount of time. That is, it works after I log in, but at some point it stops working. At that point, video and audio files do not play - they just stay at 00:00 and do nothing. This is basically the same in browsers (youtube, netflix) and local files played with mpv. (Though, it doesn't ever happen while something is playing.)

Running gentoo-pipewire-launcher restart fixes the issue, but it reoccurs randomly later. I'm not sure if it some other program causing it to die or pipewire itself. Logs don't have anything from pipewire. When it is working, it works fine. Sometimes it goes a day or more, other times it can stop working in an hour.

System is fully up to date. I'm on Fluxbox, and start gentoo-pipewire-launcher from a bash script that I run right after login. I had it in .fluxbox/startup, but it didn't work. Fluxbox is started from SDDM.

Pipewire was working fine in this set up until about a month ago. The only major change was that I installed the full KDE Plasma suite and used it for a week or two. IIRC, it was when I rebooted and moved back to Fluxbox that this issue started.

[I] media-video/pipewire
Installed versions: 1.0.7-r1 (0/0.4)^t (07:46:55 AM 07/05/2024)
(X dbus echo-cancel extra ffmpeg readline sound-server ssl v4l -bluetooth -doc -flatpak -gsettings -gstreamer -ieee1394 -jack-client -jack-sdk -liblc3 -lv2 -man -modemmanager -pipewire-alsa -roc -selinux -system-service -systemd -test -zeroconf ABI_MIPS="-n32 -n64 -o32" ABI_S390="-32 -64" ABI_X86="32 64 -x32")

[I] media-sound/pulseaudio
Installed versions: 16.1 (11:11:54 PM 06/01/2024)
(glib -bluetooth -daemon -jack -ofono-headset ABI_MIPS="-n32 -n64 -o32" ABI_S390="-32 -64" ABI_X86="32 64 -x32")

Thanks for any help or suggestions.

[JarzaClay]

I suspect something in killing the pipewire instance, try to start pipewire manually in a terminal, and read the log when it breaks.

[flexibeast]

Logs don't have anything from pipewire.

Could you clarify which logs you're referring to here? Do you mean the logs created by setting up logging as described in the gentoo-pipewire-launcher(1) man page?

${XDG_CONFIG_HOME}/gentoo-pipewire-launcher.conf (or, if ${XDG_CONFIG_HOME} is not set, ${HOME}/.config/gentoo-pipewire-launcher.conf) can be used to specify absolute paths of files to which log output should be sent, by specifying values for one or more of the GENTOO_PIPEWIRE_LOG, GENTOO_PIPEWIRE_PULSE_LOG, and GENTOO_WIREPLUMBER_LOG variables, one per line.

[osugi_sakae]

Well, didn't have any logging set up, so that was part of it. Set up all three of the logs and restarted pipewire. (I originally assumed messages would go to syslog or somewhere similar in /var/log/, so was looking there.)

So far, the GENTOO_PIPEWIRE_LOG and the GENTOO_PIPEWIRE_PULSE_LOG just have starting messages like "Starting Pipewire" or "Starting Pipewire-Pulse".

The GENTOO_WIREPLUMBER_LOG has entries about bluetooth, but I compiled without the bluetooth flag, and don't use bluetooth, so not worried about those.

It also has an entry "PipeWire's libcamera SPA plugin is missing or broken", which might explain why motion started having frame resolution issues with my webcam recently. I don't use the camera very often, so that probably isn't related to the sound issue.

A few updates:

* I noticed that wireplumber was last emerged a few days before pipewire. Re-emerged, but not sure yet if that made a difference.

* Pipewire's instance is not actually dying. It is still running (has 2 pids, as expected), just doesn't work.

[flexibeast]

Pipewire's instance is not actually dying. It is still running (has 2 pids, as expected), just doesn't work.

Is there still a WirePlumber instance running as well, though? There needs to be; it's the thing that manages audio within the user session. If there's no WirePlumber instance, that might explain the issue; try running `wireplumber` from the command line.

As an aside:

I originally assumed messages would go to syslog or somewhere similar in /var/log/, so was looking there.

Fair. However, what `gentoo-pipewire-launcher` does is set up PipeWire-based audio within a specific user-session, rather than something system-wide. So i feel that logging to syslog isn't appropriate here, and i say this as the person who added the logging code to `gentoo-pipewire-launcher` (which was reviewed by a Gentoo dev before being committed).

There are two underlying issues here:

* PipeWire is oriented towards systemd-based systems. From the pipewire(1) man page:

Logging options
JOURNAL_STREAM
Is used to parse the stream used for the journal. This is usually configured by systemd.

PIPEWIRE_LOG_LINE
Enables the logging of line numbers. Default true.

PIPEWIRE_LOG
Specifies a log file to use instead of the default logger.

PIPEWIRE_LOG_SYSTEMD
Enables the use of systemd for the logger, default true.

Those of us on non-systemd-based-systems have to find a way of handling logging which doesn't involve the systemd journal.

* systemd has 'user services' implemented; OpenRC doesn't yet (although this is being slowly worked on, and is a more complex problem than one might assume). `gentoo-pipewire-launcher` is basically a workaround.

(Eventually i'd prefer to move from OpenRC to s6 - i've used s6+66 before, when i was using Void - and set up user services via s6. i've been slowly working on this, but as it's not critical for my use-case, i've not been prioritising it.)

[dmpogo]

I don't think video is an issue here. Things like youtube just stop playing when sound disconnects.
Install and run media-sound/qpwgraph

It gives visual representation of where pipewire puts your sound

[osugi_sakae]

Thanks. I was not familiar with qpwgraph. Four screenshots are at https://od.lk/fl/NjJfOTE0NTIxOV8.

Sound was not working - the first two show like 50 volume controls, one with nothing using sound; the other when I ran mpv (but still no sound).

The other two show what happened after I re-ran gentoo-pipewire-restart - again with nothing running and then with mpv running (this time sound works).

Aside from the large number of controls, I'm not sure if anything in these screenshots indicates the problem.

Thanks.

[flexibeast]

In my previous comment, i asked:

Pipewire's instance is not actually dying. It is still running (has 2 pids, as expected), just doesn't work.

Is there still a WirePlumber instance running as well, though? There needs to be; it's the thing that manages audio within the user session. If there's no WirePlumber instance, that might explain the issue; try running `wireplumber` from the command line.

You've now run `gentoo-pipewire-launcher restart`, but that doesn't show us whether the necessary WirePlumber instance is crashing (including immediately crashing upon being started). Please check if an instance of WirePlumber is running via `pgrep -a wireplumber`, which should return a PID and a command line if WirePlumber is indeed running.

[dmpogo]

Thanks. I was not familiar with qpwgraph. Four screenshots are at https://od.lk/fl/NjJfOTE0NTIxOV8.

Sound was not working - the first two show like 50 volume controls, one with nothing using sound; the other when I ran mpv (but still no sound).

The other two show what happened after I re-ran gentoo-pipewire-restart - again with nothing running and then with mpv running (this time sound works).

Aside from the large number of controls, I'm not sure if anything in these screenshots indicates the problem.

Thanks.

Nottice that with qwpgraph you not only can see connections, but you can manipulate them, I.e grab a line and connect some source to some sink as you wish


So linking at your picture. Somehow indeed, every time one open pulseausio volume control and new instance is created. I don't know if it is a bug with pipewire or a feature.
You third case looks normal, mpv is playing, its output is connected to playback of HD audio, should be sound. Are you sure your speakers are not muted somehow ? Hardware button on laptop ?

[szatox]

So linking at your picture. Somehow indeed, every time one open pulseausio volume control and new instance is created. I don't know if it is a bug with pipewire or a feature.

Doesn't happen on my system (without pulseaudio).
Pipewire can already adjust volume for each input and output independently by itself, it doesn't need external filters for that, so it could be an issue with pulseaudio volume control.

[osugi_sakae]

You third case looks normal, mpv is playing, its output is connected to playback of HD audio, should be sound. Are you sure your speakers are not muted somehow ? Hardware button on laptop ?

They are external speakers on a desktop computer; I change the volume through pavucontrol only. The only change is my running `gentoo-pipewire-launcher.sh --restart`.

To be clear, the third pic (2024-08-31-restarted-mpv-running.png) **does** give me sound.

[osugi_sakae]

You've now run `gentoo-pipewire-launcher restart`, but that doesn't show us whether the necessary WirePlumber instance is crashing (including immediately crashing upon being started). Please check if an instance of WirePlumber is running via `pgrep -a wireplumber`, which should return a PID and a command line if WirePlumber is indeed running.

Code: Select all

$ pgrep -a pipewire
1350 /usr/bin/pipewire
1352 /usr/bin/pipewire -c pipewire-pulse.conf
$ pgrep -a wireplum
1342 /usr/bin/wireplumber

Seems to be running okay. When I checked this, the sound was NOT working.

[osugi_sakae]

Pipewire can already adjust volume for each input and output independently by itself, it doesn't need external filters for that, so it could be an issue with pulseaudio volume control.

Interestingly, I opened qpwgraph (when I noticed sound was not working) to check if there were like 50 controls again. pavucontrol immediately gave a message about being unable to connect to pulseaudio. (pic at https://od.lk/f/NjJfNzU2MjMzMjRf). (There were about 20 or so controls, btw.)

I have these installed:

media-sound/pavucontrol
Available versions: 5.0-r3 {X nls}
Installed versions: 5.0-r3(03:45:11 AM 06/02/2024)(X nls)
Homepage: https://freedesktop.org/software/pulsea ... vucontrol/
Description: Pulseaudio Volume Control, GTK based mixer for Pulseaudio

media-sound/pavucontrol-qt
Available versions: 1.3.0-r1 ~1.4.0 ~2.0.0
Installed versions: 1.3.0-r1(01:39:46 AM 06/02/2024)
Homepage: https://lxqt-project.org/
Description: Qt GUI Pulseaudio Mixer

I'm happy to try removing pulseaudio - I mostly kept it because I use pavucontrol to manage volume. What would be a similar gui pipewire / wireplumber replacement?

Note that this combo was working fine for months - it only stopped working recently, after an update. Maybe a change or a bug has them no longer playing nice together.

[szatox]

I'm happy to try removing pulseaudio - I mostly kept it because I use pavucontrol to manage volume. What would be a similar gui pipewire / wireplumber replacement?

I went in a different direction, I don't really mix audio form various sources save for notifications, so I don't have to match inputs' volumes. Instead, I plugged compressor before output (with easyeffects), which ensures that playback device will generate sound in an acceptable range regardless of how badly butchered the input stream was.
At this point alsamixer is all I need, usually via [Fn]+[Vol] buttons, and I only have to change volume by a few % for comfort.

Pipewire also remembers volume settings for different output devices, so plugging/unplugging headphones automagically sets playback volume to the level used previously with this device. Very handy.
I don't know gui tools for setting volume in pipewire, but it has some matching logic inside, so chances are you can just set input volumes once and then never touch it again, rendering your volume control GUI obsolete anyway. Perhaps wpctl status and wpctl set-volume would be good enough to set things up once even though it's a command line tool.

[dmpogo]

So linking at your picture. Somehow indeed, every time one open pulseausio volume control and new instance is created. I don't know if it is a bug with pipewire or a feature.

Doesn't happen on my system (without pulseaudio).
Pipewire can already adjust volume for each input and output independently by itself, it doesn't need external filters for that, so it could be an issue with pulseaudio volume control.

One my system it was happening when I click on kde volume control ( kmix ) Each click created new instance for pipewire. I tried it again, and it seems not happening, once control window is closed, the object disappears .