Qutebrowser 3, no sound from pipewire-only system

Hello,

The latest qutebrowser v3 from this pipewire-only system has no sound. Related messages from the shell process pasted below include CJK characters which debbugs renders as "??", all CJK messages translate as "file or directory not found"

```

ALSA lib pcm_dmix.c:1075:(snd_pcm_dmix_open) unable to open slave

[3003:3003:0116/083803.232761:ERROR:alsa_util.cc(204)] PcmOpen: default,??????????????????????

ALSA lib pcm_dmix.c:1075:(snd_pcm_dmix_open) unable to open slave

[3003:3003:0116/083803.233758:ERROR:alsa_util.cc(204)] PcmOpen: plug:default,??????????????????????

ALSA lib pcm_dmix.c:1075:(snd_pcm_dmix_open) unable to open slave

[3003:3003:0116/083808.743619:ERROR:alsa_util.cc(204)] PcmOpen: default,??????????????????????

ALSA lib pcm_dmix.c:1075:(snd_pcm_dmix_open) unable to open slave

[3003:3003:0116/083808.744661:ERROR:alsa_util.cc(204)] PcmOpen: plug:default,??????????????????????

```

About a year ago, user @iyzsong enabled pipewire support at qutebrowser v2 for me and sound has been good here until today when qutebrowser v3 was installed. iirc, a flag was enabled in qutebrowser or one of its dependencies.

Related: https://issues.guix.gnu.org/68483,https://issues.guix.gnu.org/67289

Possibly this was the change from Iyzsong which enabled sound here,

```sh

$ git diff fbbbc2088ce933d83f5b0be75308fdcb6b40fa57 d9368572abd3683bed4263eb5e149bb404baee59

For convenience, links to the upstream qt.scm file

* https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/guix.git/tree/gnu/packages/qt.scm#n2933

qtwebengine-5 args

* https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/guix.git/tree/gnu/packages/qt.scm#n2998

qtwebengine (qtwebengine-6)

Thanks for any input

On 1?16? ?, chris wrote:

and a link to the commit with commit message

chris <chris@bumblehead.com> writes:

yeah, debbugs doesn't support unicode on the web fully. But when

checking your messages in emacs debbugs interface, I see the CJK

characters just fine.

How is pipewire configured on your system? The thing is that

qtwebengine@5 is linked with PulseAudio and ALSA libraries, but @6

is linked only with alsa. You probably miss pipewire-alsa

compatibility configuration. Do you use

home-pipewire-service-type? It sets both pulse/alsa shims and it

works for me this way.

On 1?16? ?, Sergey Trofimov wrote:

This system does not use dbus and pipewire was configured about a year ago when there were few options for using pipewire out of the box in any sort of way.

Guix home is configured to write a pipewire and three wireplumber config files, as described at this link https://wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/PipeWire#Configuration

.config/pipewire/pipewire.conf

.config/wireplumber/wireplumber.conf

.config/wireplumber/main.lua.d/80-disable-dbus.lua

.config/wireplumber/bluetooth.lua.d/80-disable-logind.lua

With with those files in place, pipewire and wireplumber are started sequentially to get working sound. I use this in my .config/sway/config (possibly this is copy-pasted from unmatched-paren)

```

exec_always killall -wqr "(pipewire|wireplumber)" \

|| sleep 1 && ((pipewire &); sleep 2 && (wireplumber &))

```

chris <chris@bumblehead.com> writes:

Well, qtwebengine doesn't link with PipeWire anyway, you have to

use either PulseAudio or ALSA. Here is an example

~/.config/alsa/asoundrc on my system, created by

home-pipewire-service-type. If you add such file to your setup -

qutebrowser should be able to use alsa lib to output audio through

pipewire.

On 1?17? ?, Sergey Trofimov wrote:

Sergey,

Thanks for this help. Running `$(guix build pipewire)` returned the same path shown in your example, so I tried simply copy-pasting your example to ~/.config/alsa/asoundrc and restarting my system

Sound did not work, but messages in the qutebrowser process output were slightly different. foreign text translates as: "host dropped",

```

[1588:1588:0117/013614.549773:ERROR:alsa_util.cc(204)] PcmOpen: default,??????????

[1588:1588:0117/013614.559451:ERROR:alsa_util.cc(204)] PcmOpen: plug:default,??????????

[1588:1588:0117/013614.575316:ERROR:alsa_util.cc(204)] PcmOpen: default,??????????

[1588:1588:0117/013614.588043:ERROR:alsa_util.cc(204)] PcmOpen: plug:default,??????????

```

These messages differ from the earlier messages that basically said "file not found".

Thanks for helping me. I will sleep now and maybe try more things tomorrow,

Chris

On 1?17? ?, chris wrote:

The english variant of the same message is probably "Host is down"

Sergey, your configuration file is working and audio is heard from qutebrowser on this system.

Internet searches surfaced commands like these,

`pw-cli`

`strace -e connect pw-dump >/dev/null`

Error messages were seen relating to socket files not found,

`$XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/pipewire-0`

`$XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/pipewire-0-manager`

Various things attempted, but the socket files missing every time sway started

Finally, tried removing the pipewire-starting parts of the sway config

```

# exec_always killall -wqr "(pipewire|wireplumber)" \

# || sleep 1 && ((pipewire &); sleep 2 && (wireplumber &))

```

Then separately started pipewire and wireplumber "manually" from the shell. The socket files were created and when qutebrowser sound could be heard.

Thank you Sergey,

Chris

chris <chris@bumblehead.com> writes:

I'm glad you sorted it out. Check what are the environment

variables for your sway process (cat /proc/<pid>/environ | tr -s

'\0' '\n').

Maybe XDG_RUNTIME_DIR is missing there? Enabling debug logging for

pipewire might help as well:

On 1?25? ?, Sergey Trofimov wrote:

Sergey,

Yesterday after reporting back here, I found that I was able to change the commands used by sway from this

```

exec_always killall -wqr "(pipewire|wireplumber)" \

|| sleep 1 && ((pipewire &); sleep 2 && (wireplumber &))

```

To this

```

exec sleep 2 && pipewire

exec sleep 4 && wireplumber

```

sound is working each time the machine is started or restarted.

In order to script-generate the asoundrc file, I wish to use pipewire's store directory path inside a scheme function. WOuld you teach me how to do this? eg, `$(guix build pipewire) # /gnu/store/8572wxb5138hanhvn1lbfdm1kicxsd2k-pipewire-1.0.0`

No success trying various things from this thread https://www.mail-archive.com/help-guix@gnu.org/msg11871.html

'have also tried the following

```

(use-modules (gnu packages linux)

(gnu packages build-tools)

(gnu packages package-management))

(guix build pipewire)

```

running the file fails with this message:

```

Wrong type to apply: #<package guix@1.4.0-15.e0885fc gnu/packages/package-management.scm:179 7fd6dfe0ebb0>

```

Thanks in advance for any recommendations or advice. Thank you for conversing with me and helping me thus far,

Chris

This attempt from the discussion here https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/2021-03/msg00441.html

```

(define s (open-connection))

(display (derivation->output-path

(package-derivation s pipewire #:graft? #f) "out"))

```

It runs but returns the wrong store path,

/gnu/store/kqw8zs84px1vzw98yv9xax4rc0n612qy-pipewire-0.3.77

The $(guix build pipewire) command returns this,

/gnu/store/8572wxb5138hanhvn1lbfdm1kicxsd2k-pipewire-1.0.0

Thanks,

Chris

chris <chris@bumblehead.com> writes:

Ugh, why don't you use home-pipewire-service-type?

Packages are file-like, i.e. replaced with their location when

used in g-exp.

Here is an example how to define the configuration, I've adapted

it from gnu/home/services/home.scm

chris <chris@bumblehead.com> writes:

0.3.77 is the previous version, from a month ago. Is your checkout

fresh? Did you `guix pull`?

On 1?26? ?, Sergey Trofimov wrote:

`home-pipewire-service-type` has no option to skip dbus and thus far this system does not use dbus, ibus, elogind and systemd etc.

Interesting. Thanks for teaching me this.

The above does work :) thank you. I'm interested to explore writing a function that wraps g-exp behaviour to return a package as store path string and might do that outside of this ticket.

Thank you for your kind help and correspondence,

Chris

On 1?26? ?, Sergey Trofimov wrote:

yes `guix pull` has been used :|

done

On Fri, Jan 26 2024, Sergey Trofimov wrote:

Maybe you should check your GUILE_LOAD_PATH and

GUILE_LOAD_COMPILED_PATH. That's where guile finds the guix modules.

They might include folders from an old guix.

chris <chris@bumblehead.com> writes:

The only dependency on `dbus` is that pipewire shepherd service

has it in the requirement field.

You can add a no-op shepherd service which would have (provision

'(dbus)) to satisfy the dependency.

On 1?26? ?, Clément Lassieur wrote:

I'm not sure how to investigate or verify that but here is the result of echo

$ echo $GUILE_LOAD_PATH

/home/bumble/.guix-home/profile/share/guile/site/3.0:/run/current-system/profile/share/guile/site/3.0

$ echo $GUILE_LOAD_COMPILED_PATH

/home/bumble/.guix-home/profile/lib/guile/3.0/site-ccache:/home/bumble/.guix-home/profile/share/guile/site/3.0:/run/current-system/profile/lib/guile/3.0/site-ccache:/run/current-system/profile/share/guile/site/3.0

`.guix-home/profile/share/guile/site/3.0` only has a few symlinks ice-9/ ncurses shepherd shepherd.scm

`/run/current-system/profile/share/guile/site/3.0` has many more symlinks

On 1?26? ?, Sergey Trofimov wrote:

I don't know how to do this. If you share links to documentation or examples I will read those. It would be nice to use the home-pipewire-service rather than manage these files myself.

Thank you and thank you for any further suggestions or advice you may give,

Chris