Persistent audio issues in a particular appvm (Qubes 3.1)

[Jonathan Diamond]

Hi,

I have looked at similar audio issue posts and whilst some are similar none seem to provide any answers to my problem.

I have an appvm based on a Fedora-23 template, I also have other appvms e.g. the "personal" and "untrusted" vms based off the same template.

The "personal" vm I can boot and play audio without issues, the "development" vm will not play any audio at all this appears to be a pulseaudio issue (this hasn't always been the case it was working fine about a week ago and I cannot think of what changed).

When I check the pulseaudio daemon on "development" after boot it isn't running, if I start it manually (pulseaudio --start) I see a "Dummy Output" device in the sound settings (previously nothing would have been there) but still no audio will play.

The fact that audio doesn't work after restarting pulseaudio isn't really a surprise because even on vm with working audio ("personal") if I run "pulseaudio -k" followed by "pulseaudio --start" I find that I have lost audio there as well. Following the restart of pulseaudo the output device is always displayed as "Dummy Output" whereas when it is working it is displayed as "Qubes VCHAN Sink".

If I move the "development" private storage to one of the working Fedora-23 appvms e.g. I overwrite the private.img of "personal" with the "development" private.img audio stops working there as well (I tried clearing down the .config/pulse directory under the users home but it didn't help, I'm not sure what other user state there could be).

When the audio isn't working I cannot attach audio devices to the vm in qubes manager which is the easiest way to spot the problem has occurred.

It's not the first time I've had this issue but it has always gone away in the past, this time however it seems more persistent. All appvm settings are the same e.g. devices etc.

Can anyone provide any more suggestions, particullarly perhaps how the "Qubes VCHAN Sink" is provided? or maybe I am kicking pulseaudio incorrectly and there is a better way etc?

Obviosuly I could migrate my private storage away from the vm in question and trash it but I'm hoping something can be learnt from this problem.

Thanks for any help.

Jon

[Marek Marczykowski-Górecki]

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On Mon, Dec 05, 2016 at 05:19:23AM -0800, Jonathan Diamond wrote:
> When I check the pulseaudio daemon on "development" after boot it isn't running, if I start it manually (pulseaudio --start) I see a "Dummy Output" device in the sound settings (previously nothing would have been there) but still no audio will play.

If you want to start pulseaudio manually in the VM, use
start-pulseaudio-with-vchan command.

> If I move the "development" private storage to one of the working Fedora-23 appvms e.g. I overwrite the private.img of "personal" with the "development" private.img audio stops working there as well (I tried clearing down the .config/pulse directory under the users home but it didn't help, I'm not sure what other user state there could be).

Take a look at ~/.xsession-errors - maybe pulseaudion fails to start for
some other reason. Also take a look at `journalctl` output when it
fails.

> Can anyone provide any more suggestions, particullarly perhaps how the "Qubes VCHAN Sink" is provided? or maybe I am kicking pulseaudio incorrectly and there is a better way etc?

There is 'module-vchan-sink' providing it. start-pulseaudio-with-vchan
script take care of loading the right module.

- --
Best Regards,
Marek Marczykowski-Górecki
Invisible Things Lab
A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
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[Jonathan Diamond]

Thanks Marek, using the start-pulseaudio-with-vchan script does the trick and fixes the problem.

I had already looked through journalctl and couldn't see anything obvious, I'll look at the .xsession-errors as you suggested perhaps that will explain things.

Jon