Qubes 4.0 audio, x2go

[Chris Seekamp]

I upgraded from Qubes 3.2 to 4.0. I had been using Qubes 3.2 for over a
year. I have run into the following issues.

1. I have been using an external USB device for audio-conferencing etc.
because of the Qubes latency issues. In Qubes 3.2 it worked great.  I
simply attached it to the VM I wanted to use it in and that was all
there was to it. In Qubes 4.0, when I try to attach it I don't get an
error but running the command "qvm-usb" does not show it attached. When
I use a regular USB headset it attaches and works correctly, but of
course will not solve the latency issue. Has anyone tested an external
USB audio device successfully with Qubes 4.0. I did try making
/dev/snd/* executable by all and reload PulseAudio's module-udev-detect
but that didn't help.

2. In Qubes 3.2 I had issues getting x2go to work and I reported it at
the time. After trying the fedora templates, I tried debian 8 and it
worked. Now in Qubes 4.0 I am having the problem again with both fedora
26 and debian 9.  debian 8 is no longer available it seems. I can ssh to
the target server find over port 22 (which is the port x2go uses). Has
anyone by any chance tried using x2go with Qubes 4.0 and had any
success? I am of course using a VPN qube, which inherits from
sys-firewall.  There doesn't seem to be a ProxyVM setting anymore like
there was in Qubes 3.2.

I would like to note that so far the new Qubes Manager is, to me, more
difficult to use than the old one. First of all, I have to constantly
use the "Refresh qube list" button each time I do something and want to
see if reflected. So the manager often is out of sync with reality, at
least if you start or stop anything. Also, it seems to be slow when you
do something (until the operation completes?).

I do like the GUI for attaching/detaching devices. Unfortunately it
shows the same behavior as the command line when attaching the external
audio device.

Thanks in advance for any enlightenment anyone can provide.

Chris Seekamp

[Chris Seekamp]

OK, I have x2go working now. I had an ssh command in my .bash_profile on the target computer which was responsible. When I removed it, I got x2go working. I am now using x2go from a Qube based on fedora 26.

I still have the problem with the external audio card. I tried it on another computer and it works fine and of course it worked with Qubes OS 3.2. Does the latency problem in Qubes 4.0 still exist if I don't use USB for microphone/speakers but instead use the internal speakers/mic of the computer (or the headphones/computer mic jack)? What I am referring to is this documentation page: https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/external-audio/. This seems to be saying that for things requiring high quality audio (even Skype) an external card is needed. I tried Skype test call using the mic/headphone jack and I assigned the mic to the Qube I was using and the test call went fine. So does the latency issue described on the page referenced above still exist? Before using the external audio card on Qubes 3.2 I did run into problems with the audio in audio/video conferences (the audio would drop sometimes) until I started using the external audio card.

Thanks.

[awokd]

On Sun, April 1, 2018 6:17 pm, Chris Seekamp wrote:

> Does the latency problem in Qubes 4.0 still exist if I don't use
> USB for microphone/speakers but instead use the internal speakers/mic of
> the computer (or the headphones/computer mic jack)?

Not sure if it will help with what you're doing, but if you go to the dom0
Volume control audio mixer/Output Devices/Advanced, you can set a +/-
latency offset there.