Pipewire for multiple users
Lucio Crusca
from experimental and it used to work for both of the users I have in my
system as a PulseAudio drop in replacement (thanks to
pipewire-audio-client-libraries package). Then I accidentally removed it
and reinstalled it, but 0.3.33 is available now and it works only for
one of my users (namely "lucio"). For the other user (namely "u") I only
get:
lucio@t470:~ $ su - u
...
u@t470:~ $ pactl info
Connection failure: Connection refused
pa_context_connect() failed: Connection refused
and user "u" gets no sound. I've also tried logging in as "u" from
lightdm instead of the terminal, but I get the same results.
With 0.3.32 I had this configuration in
/etc/pipewire/pipewire-pulse.conf, in order to let other users play sounds:
[...]
context.modules = [
[...]
{ name = libpipewire-module-protocol-pulse
args = {
server.address = [
"unix:native"
"tcp:4713"
]
That file is still there on my system, because it was there for the
0.3.32 version and no one deleted it, but when I tried to follow these
steps [1] again, hoping to fix the problem, I noticed that 0.3.33 does
not bundle example configuration files anymore, or, at least, they are
not in the directory specified by the documentation anymore. So I
suspect something changed between 0.3.32 and 0.3.33 as far as the
configuration is concerned, but I'm not sure.
Please also note that "u" user not only lacks a functioning PA
replacement, but even ALSA and JACK replacements are not working anymore.
The systemctl command for the "u" user bails out with
Failed to connect to bus: No such file or directory
but I'm not sure I actually need to execute systemctl commands for the
"u" user while running "inside" the "lucio" session (xhost +)... I seem
to recall it used to work without them, just with the "tcp:4713" config
in place, but things may have changed with the new release, so I thought
it could be useful to add this piece of information.
Any thoughts?
[1] https://wiki.debian.org/PipeWire
martin f krafft
Regarding the following, written by "Lucio Crusca" on 2021-08-19 at 16:05 Uhr +0200:
lucio@t470:~ $ su - u
...
u@t470:~ $ pactl info Connection failure: Connection refused pa_context_connect() failed: Connection refused
Pulse and systemd need a dbus session, and su will not get you that. If you want to use either, you need to ensure that you're properly logged in as the user, or configure your system to set up the dbus session accordingly.
An easy way to do this is to use ssh with X-forwarding:
ssh -X u@localhost and then try it again.
If that doesn't work, confirm that "u" can use Pulse when logged in with a regular desktop session, i.e. at the graphical login screen.
Hope this helps,
- .''`. martin f. krafft <madduck@d.o> @martinkrafft
- :' : proud Debian developer
.'http://people.debian.org/~madduck- Debian - when you have better things to do than fixing systems
"the problem with america is stupidity. i'm not saying there should
be a capital punishment for stupidity, but why don't we just take
the safety labels off of everything and let the problem solve
itself?"
-- seen on irc
Lucio Crusca
> If you want to use either, you need to ensure that you're properly
> logged in as the user, or configure your system to set up the dbus
> session accordingly.
>
> An easy way to do this is to use |ssh| with X-forwarding:
>
> |ssh -X u@localhost |
>
> and then try it again.
used ssh and "u" user used to play sounds perfectly until PipeWire
0.3.32 even switching users with "su" only.
However using ssh it now works with PipeWire 0.3.33 too and that's
enough for me, thanks a lot.