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Topic: [SOLVED] Having trouble setting up PipeWire on Artix/OpenRC/XFCE (Read 3197 times) previous topic - next topic
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[SOLVED] Having trouble setting up PipeWire on Artix/OpenRC/XFCE

I'm basically new to this forum, and still pretty inexperienced with not only Artix, but Linux in general. I didn't really get into using Linux until sometime last year, I think, but I'm starting to get used to it, and I've done a bunch of stuff so far to set up my computer with Artix.

I did take a look at the Artix Wiki article on setting up PipeWire, but I still haven't gotten it up and working yet.

With what seemed to be a regular pulseaudio setup, I used yay to install pipewire-pulse, pipewire-jack, pipewire-alsa, and wireplumber (pipewire itself was already on my system before) and uninstall the packages pulseaudio and jack2. Pretty much immediately after install, the pulseaudio control application I use (pavucontrol), couldn't detect my computer's microphone anymore, but the other controls, like for the output volume, were still there. But when I restarted my computer, pavucontrol couldn't connect to the PulseAudio server anymore, and when typing "pactl list" into a terminal window, I got a message that said "Connection failure: Connection refused" followed by the message "pa_context_connect() failed: Connection refused".

What are the steps I need to take to finish setting up PipeWire? I want to use my computer for music production, and having a lightweight and low-latency audio server is the ideal thing for it on Linux.

I know Cadence exists, but there's all this extra stuff that comes with it and it's got these graphical applications with loads of settings all over the place, so I think I'd rather use PipeWire.

Re: Having trouble setting up PipeWire on Artix/OpenRC/XFCE

Reply #1
Are you sure pipewire is running ?
Code: [Select]
pgrep -a pipewire
for me returns
Code: [Select]
3636 pipewire
3637 /usr/bin/pipewire-pulse
3638 /usr/bin/pipewire-media-session
Assuming you are using wireplumber as the session manager check that as well.
Code: [Select]
pgrep -a wireplumber
If they are all running try using pipewire-media-session instead of wireplumber.

Problems I had when I switched to wireplumber:
About 60% of the time I had to start X / KDE twice to get any audio after a reboot.
My choices of where audio output was routed would randomly change. Never happens with pipewire-media-session




Re: Having trouble setting up PipeWire on Artix/OpenRC/XFCE

Reply #2
Are you sure pipewire is running ?
Code: [Select]
pgrep -a pipewire
for me returns
Code: [Select]
3636 pipewire
3637 /usr/bin/pipewire-pulse
3638 /usr/bin/pipewire-media-session
Assuming you are using wireplumber as the session manager check that as well.
Code: [Select]
pgrep -a wireplumber
If they are all running try using pipewire-media-session instead of wireplumber.

I ran both commands, then replaced wireplumber with pipewire-media-session and ran the first command again, and each time, there was no output. So my guess is that it doesn't automatically start out of the box, and that I need to set it up to do that myself. What's the right way to have PipeWire start automatically on boot or login on OpenRC specifically, let alone once with a command?

Re: Having trouble setting up PipeWire on Artix/OpenRC/XFCE

Reply #3
Hello and welcome,

I don't have an answer about pipewire.

When I got bored of pulseaudio, I just used alsa :

I removed the pulseaudio packages except one: libpulse.

I installed qastools which offers a nice and very practical mixer :
Code: [Select]
sudo pacman -Sy qastools

Then I listed my audio cards:
Code: [Select]
cat /proc/asound/cards
 0 [HDMI           ]: HDA-Intel - HDA ATI HDMI
                      HDA ATI HDMI at 0xfce60000 irq 96
 1 [Generic        ]: HDA-Intel - HD-Audio Generic
                      HD-Audio Generic at 0xfc900000 irq 98

I created/modified  /etc/asound.conf

And added this to select card1:
Code: [Select]
defaults.pcm.card 1
defaults.ctl.card 1

Re: Having trouble setting up PipeWire on Artix/OpenRC/XFCE

Reply #4
I think I fixed it. So apparently, all I had to do was run the pipewire, pipewire-pulse, and either wireplumber or pipewire-media-session programs that are in my /usr/bin to get it working.

What I'd appreciate, however, is that whoever is maintaining those packages in the Artix repos to run a script when I install pipewire-media-session and/or wireplumber that adds whichever program plus pipewire to my list of programs run at login (and removes them from the list on uninstall), since I had to do that manually, and didn't know until less than 24 hours ago. Is there some place I can make this suggestion to the maintainers/devs?

Re: Having trouble setting up PipeWire on Artix/OpenRC/XFCE

Reply #5
I think I fixed it. So apparently, all I had to do was run the pipewire, pipewire-pulse, and either wireplumber or pipewire-media-session programs that are in my /usr/bin to get it working.

That's in the wiki, which you said you'd read, or "Had a look at".

Glad you got it working but you'd have saved yourself some time if you'd looked a little harder  ;)